Here Are the Specs for Intel’s Arc Desktop Graphics Cards

As Intel prepares to officially launch its Arc desktop GPU, the company is detailing the specifications of four models in the lineup.

The company revealed the specs on Thursday video(opens in new window) This gives PC makers a preview of Intel’s foray into discrete gaming graphics cards. The chipmaker confirmed that the A770 is the most powerful model in the Arc desktop lineup, followed by the A750.

Those then narrowed down to the mid-range A580 and low-end A380, which Newegg has been quietly selling online in the US since last month.

The specs show that the A770 has a memory bandwidth of up to 560GB/s. Meanwhile, the memory bandwidth of the A580 and A750 can reach 512GB/s, beating the 448GB/s of Nvidia’s RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti, although the specs aren’t always directly comparable due to the different architectures.

The Xe core represents the primary compute engine for Arc graphics cards. “So more Xe cores means more graphics performance and bigger chips,” Intel graphics researcher Tom Petersen said in the video. Meanwhile, the XMX engine is designed to accelerate AI-based workloads such as video and photo editing.

Specifications for Intel-branded Arc graphics. (Source: Intel)

Intel also revealed the clock speed of the GPU. However, the specs only cover expected performance for most games and applications; they don’t necessarily represent the highest possible clock speed.

Another notable detail is how the Arc A770 will come with 8GB of GDDR6 memory. But in some cases, vendors release 16GB models.

The specs don’t fully reveal the performance. But in recent weeks, Intel has released some benchmarks for the Arc A770 and Arc 750, which suggest that these cards will compete with Nvidia’s RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3060 offerings, respectively. The key question, however, is how much the Arc card will cost.

For now, Intel continues to be mum on pricing and when the Arc desktop graphics cards will launch in the US. But the company plans to release its own Intel-branded Arc cards, just as Nvidia has its Founders Edition RTX 3000 GPUs.

“We’re shipping it internationally and it will be available on launch day,” Peterson said. Intel’s own Arc A770 card will also come with 16GB of video RAM.

Meanwhile, check out our review of the Arc A380, which is on sale at Newegg for $139 with a higher clock speed. The product’s low price may appeal to consumers on a budget. But our rating for the A380 was mediocre due to its inconsistent performance, especially when launching older games running DirectX11.