With the launches of GeForce RTX 4060 and Radeon RX 7600, the Intel Arc 7-series finds itself being a tough sell, pushing Intel Arc board partners such as Acer to clear out their inventory at deep discounts. The Acer Predator Arc A770 BiFrost graphics card sees its price slashed to $281, down from its $399 launch price. The premium custom-design card features a unique lateral+axial air based cooling solution that's studded with RGB lighting. The Acer Predator BiFrost is also one of the very few custom-design A770 cards to feature 16 GB of 17 Gbps GDDR6 memory, much like the Intel Limited Edition reference-design, most other custom-design cards come with 8 GB of 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory.

Sparkle Computer and Intel, longstanding Thunderbolt development partner since 2015, have announced a new partnership to launch the SPARKLE Intel Arc Series Graphics Cards. With a wealth of experience producing quality industrial graphics cards, ODM solutions and peripherals, Sparkle is now expanding our reach into the consumer graphics business.

"We value this collaboration and we are fully prepared," says Willie Huang, General Manager of Sparkle Computer Co., LTD. "Sparkle is dedicated to creating a creator-friendly working environment, ranging from industrial graphics, external GPU to docking stations.... As the last piece of the puzzle, Sparkle Intel Arc Graphics, featuring an advanced Xe Media engine and AV1 encoder, has fully completed our product line and fulfilled the requirement of the desktop community"

Intel on Wednesday released the latest version of its Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Version 101.4514 beta includes a handful performance updates. To begin with, it adds optimization for "AEW: Fight Forever," and "Layers of Fear." "Assassin's Creed Unity" is playable, with the drivers providing a 271% performance uplift at 1080p, and 313% uplift at 1440p, as tested using an A770 graphics card. F1 22 sees some performance uplifts: at 1080p with High settings, one can expect up to 36% improvement in frame-rates. At 1440p with High settings, up to 20% uplifts can be had. At 1080p with Ultra High settings and ray tracing enabled, up to 10% uplifts can be had. "Deathloop" is the third game with major performance uplifts—up to 10% at 1080p with Ultra settings; and up to 8% at 1440p with Very High settings.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4514

Intel late Thursday released the Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4502 WHQL. The drivers address a major issue that caused the iTunes Windows app to crash during launch. It also addresses a blank screen error noticed in some apps that use WebView2 embedded content. These aside, the the company identified new issues with GPU hardware acceleration for Premiere Pro, errors with Topaz Video AI, and crash with F1 23 on certain XeSS presets. There are no new game optimizations with this release.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Driver 101.4502 WHQL

Intel Graphics today released the latest version of Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Version 101.4499 beta adds optimization for F1 23, Aliens: Dark Descent, Forever Skies, and Counter Strike 2. There are major performance uplifts to be had. Counter Strike 2 sees up to 8% uplift at 1440p with high settings, and up to 10% at 1080p with Very High settings. F1 23 players can expect up to 33% uplift at 1080p with Ultra High settings and RT on, and an 18% uplift with RT off; and a 27% uplift at 1440p with high settings. Intel also updated its Destiny 2 optimization, with a neat 11% uplift to be had at 1080p with the highest settings. An error or black screen seen on applications embedding WebView2 frames, has been fixed.

DOWNLOAD: Intel GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4499 Beta

Intel Arc graphics have dedicated AI hardware built-in. Leveraging those capabilities for gaming gets the most performance possible out of Arc GPUs, and that's exactly what Xe Super Sampling does. Let's look closer: when you turn on XeSS, every frame the GPU renders starts at a lower size than your target resolution. That smaller image renders quickly, then XeSS steps in. XeSS uses a trained AI model combined with motion vectors and frame history to intelligently upscale frames to full HD, 1440p, or 4K. Got all that? The sausage-making can get pretty technical, but the important thing is turning XeSS on scales games to high resolutions faster than traditional rendering could.

FPS numbers aren't the only thing we're increasing: over fifty games now include XeSS, from the biggest franchises to your niche favorites. When we launched the Intel Arc A750 and A770, we showed how XeSS works to boost FPS in nine popular games with over a dozen more on the way. Now with our high-performance desktop GPUs out for half a year, our game developer friends have helped deliver even more AI-fueled upscaling to over fifty new and existing games. A full list of every game and demo with XeSS included is at the bottom of this article.

Today, Intel introduced the Intel Arc Pro A60 and Pro A60M as new members of the Intel Arc Pro A-series professional range of graphics processing units (GPUs). The new products are a significant step up in performance in the Intel Arc Pro family and are carefully designed for professional workstations users with up to 12 GB of video memory (VRAM) and support for four displays with high dynamic range (HDR) and Dolby Vision support.

With built-in ray tracing hardware, graphics acceleration and machine learning capabilities, the Intel Arc Pro A60 GPU unites fluid viewports, the latest in visual technologies and rich content creation in a traditional single slot factor.

Intel released the Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4382 Beta. Thesse come with performance optimization for "Diablo IV," "Street Fighter 6," and improvements for its previous optimization for "Total War: Warhammer III" (D3D11 mode) Mirror of Madness benchmark, with up to 4% improved framerates to be had at 1080p with Ultra settings. Among the issues fixed with this release include random Vulkan API applications experiencing crashes; an application crash of "The Last of Us Part 1," an application crash with Unreal Engine 5.2 Editor, and lower than expected performance in the Battle Hub benchmark of "Street Fighter 6." Grab the driver from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4832 beta

Naughty Dog and Iron Galaxy have released the v1.0.5.1 Patch for the PC version of The Last of Us Part 1, bringing general and AMD GPU stability improvements, and fixing issues seen with all Intel Arc GPUs.

According to the rather short release notes, the newest update brings general stability improvements, fixes crashes on boot that were seen on all Intel Arc GPUs, as well as brings stability improvements for some AMD GPUs during an extended playthrough. Naughty Dog was keen to note that they are still closely watching for reports to support future improvements and patches, as well as actively optimizing, working on game stability, and implementing additional fixes that will be included in future updates.

Intel has published its latest blog post, announcing the Intel Arc Balanced Builds, an initiative that pairs up Intel Arc GPUs with Intel Core CPUs, creating balanced configurations that match Intel Arc graphics cards to the "best-fitting" Intel Core CPU. Starting at $423 for the GPU and CPU and $899 for the full system, Intel claims these combinations come from thousands of test runs and hundreds of hours in the lab, leading up to 15,000 datapoints and 22 GB of data.

According to Intel's own testing, which includes a wide variety of Intel Core processors in different configurations and games, there is a perfect CPU range for both its entry level Intel Arc A380 graphics card, as well as the Intel Arc A750 and Arc A770 graphics cards. Of course, for those with a big or unlimited budget, there is always the best configuration that money can buy, but making a balanced build is what makes sense for many others.

Intel Graphics releases Arc GPU Graphics Drivers version 101.4369 WHQL. These drivers significantly improve performance for "The Outlast Trials," with gains of up to 65% and 52% to be had at 1080p and 1440p, respectively, compared to the previous 101.4355 drivers. The drivers also offer 4% to 11% uplifts for "Starship Troopers: Extermination" Early Access. The drivers introduce an all new version of Arc Control, which adds fan speed settings, VRR control, a new Search bar that finds features and settings; improved background replacement for virtual camera, and the ability to select more than one device for telemetry. It also fixes UAC requirements to launch Arc Control, improved Resizable BAR status reporting, and live performance monitoring.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4369 WHQL

According to leaked details, it appears that ASRock is preparing at least three custom versions of the upcoming Radeon RX 7600 graphics card, including Phantom Gaming, Challenger, and Steel Legend series. The list of ASRock custom Radeon RX 7600 graphics cards comes from the ECC listing, and these three are listed among some other yet to be announced graphics cards.

As you can see from the list below, ASRock will have three Radeon RX 7600 versions, all of which are factory-overclocked. The Phantom Gaming version should be a more premium model, while the Challenger and Steel Legend should be closer to MSRP. The Steel Legend is a novelty in ASRock's graphics card lineup, and we expect a similar silver design found on ASRock's Steel Legend motherboards. The list also includes the recently announced Radeon RX 7900 XT Taichi White and a low profile Intel Arc A380 graphics card.

In a blog post, NVIDIA claims that its AV1 video encoder is vastly superior in terms of quality, compared to both AMD and Intel's alternatives. The still shot provided by NVIDIA to show its superior quality over its competitors, was encoded at 4K60p, obviously using the AV1 codec. Nvidia used its own GeForce RTX 4080 card and compared it to an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT and an Intel Arc A770, with all three cards encoding the video at 12 Mbps using the latest release of OBS Studio.

It just so happens that OBS Studio 29.1 added support for AV1 over the Enhanced Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) and now allows for live streaming using AV1 to YouTube. This is also the main reason for the NVIDIA blog post, as prior to this release, it wasn't possible to stream using AV1 in OBS Studio. NVIDIA has been known for the quality of its video encoder for quite some time, but we'd like to see some independent testing before we give NVIDIA the win here, especially as the company has only provided a single screenshot as proof of its superiority.

Intel Graphics employees inadvertently revealed that the company's Xe2 "Battlemage" graphics architecture is being designed for the 4 nm silicon fabrication node, which would give Intel's GPU designers a leap in transistor density and power headroom, given that TSMC 4 nm is an EUV node compared to the current 6 nm DUV node the company builds its Arc "Alchemist" GPUs on. The leak also seems to confirm that its succeeding "Celestial" graphics architecture is being designed for 3 nm. An enthusiast named gamma0burst sifted through public profiles of several Intel employees, and scored these details in their professional profile pages.

We are almost certain that Xe2 "Battlemage" is going to be built on the TSMC 4 nm node, and to a slightly lesser degree, about Xe3 "Celestial" being designed for TSMC's 3 nm N3X node. Intel roadmaps pin the debut of "Battlemage" to a 2023-2024 timeline, although this could also be a reference to the iGPU of the upcoming Core "Meteor Lake" processors that debut in the second half of 2023. Intel is highly likely to deliver "Meteor Lake" within its 2H-2023 timeline, which would mean that the mention of "2024" in the graphics technology roadmap could mean that discrete GPUs based on "Battlemage" only arrive next year.

Acer's Arc A770 Predator has once again been discounted down to $339, making it the least expensive graphics card with 16 GB of VRAM. While AMD marketing is advertising its 16 GB graphics cards with price starting at $499, comparing it to NVIDIA, Intel Arc lineup was not on their list.

Acer Arc A770 Predator BiFrost is one of the rare custom Arc A770 graphics cards on the market with fully enabled ACM-G10 GPU and 16 GB of VRAM. It has been previously discounted down to $339 in March, but quickly got back up to $399.99. Now, Acer has once again launched the sale over at Newegg.com and Amazon.com, pulling it back down to $339.99. It has a hybrid dual-fan cooler, combining blower-type and standard fans. It needs two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and has a slightly factory overclock of 100 MHz, with GPU base clock of 2.2 GHz.

Video technology innovator Matrox Video today announced the launch of its new Matrox LUMA series of graphics cards with Intel Arc GPUs. The series consists of three single-slot cards: the LUMA A310, a low-profile fanless card; the LUMA A310F, a low-profile fanned card; and the LUMA A380, a full-sized fanned card.

Matrox Video developed the LUMA range to satisfy significant demand in the mainstream graphics market for driving multiple screens, with a balance between size, reliability, and performance for different applications. The new LUMA series is aimed at high-reliability and embedded PC applications in the medical, digital signage, control room, video wall, and industrial markets.

Intel today released the latest version of Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Version 101.4335 Beta comes with optimization for "Star Wars: Jedi Survivor," "The Swordsmen X: Survival," and "Redfall." There are no new issues fixed with this release of the Arc GPU Graphics Drivers, but the company identified a number of issues spanning its Arc discrete GPUs, Iris Xe MAX discrete GPUs, and the iGPUs powering Intel Core processors (11th Gen onward). Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4335 beta

Gunnir unveiled its top-end Intel Alchemist card closer to the start of this year - and this week the Chinese company has started selling a white edition of the Arc A770 Photon 16G OC graphics card. It has been reported that this is a world first - no other Alchemist card on the market features a custom cooler finished in white. Gunnir's standard Photon OC model - fitted with a dark gray-ish triple-fan design - has been available for a few months, and a snazzy blue Flux OC model also exists but is restricted to 8 GB VRAM.

Regardless of color choices, Gunnir's range topping Photon OC cards feature the best mainstream graphics hardware that Team Blue has to offer - namely an Alchemist SKU as seen in the (reference design) Arc A770 Limited Edition 16 GB model. Intel's board partners are having a tough time shifting their Arc lineup of graphics cards - discerning customers are wary of relatively immature architectures - and Gunnir has chosen to introduce a seasonal price cut across the Alchemist range. The promotion offers Chinese customers (via Gunnir's JD.com store) discounts on A380 (max. 33%), and A770 (max. 13%) GPUs.

Today, award-winning systems integrator MAINGEAR introduced a new line of PC gaming desktops equipped with Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition GPUs, opening up advanced high-performance gaming experiences at an affordable price point. With AI-enhanced Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) upscaling, and the latest breakthroughs in graphics technologies, MAINGEAR PCs with Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition GPUs offer the perfect entry point for those looking to take their game to the next level. Experience high-refresh gaming from the latest AAA games, high-octane esports titles, and then some. Pre-configured options, including the flagship MG-1, can be purchased through MAINGEAR starting at $999 USD.

"Intel is on a mission to bring balance back to the market by offering great performance per dollar with GPUs featuring modern technologies such as XeSS AI-based upscaling, powerful ray tracing hardware, and AV1 encoding," said Qi Lin, Intel Sr. Director Client Graphics Group. "MAINGEAR has a reputation of using the best quality parts and including the Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition GPUs in the MG-1 and VYBE systems validates the tremendous progress we've made with consistent driver updates to increase performance and support new games on day of release. We look forward to more gamers enjoying what Arc graphics has to offer."

Sparkle, a Taiwanese computer electronics maker, is again entering the GPU market after almost ten years of inactivity in the space. A while back, Sparkle was one of NVIDIA's original Add-In Board (AIB) partners and helped them launch the GeForce 7900 PCI GPU. The company continued to make NVIDIA-based GPUs until GTX 700 series in 2013. After a decade, Sparkle is back again with ambitions to be Intel's AIB partner and announced not one but three graphics cards to start. Called A750 Titan, A750 Orc, and A380 Elf, these cards feature triple-fan, dual-fan, and single-fan coolers, respectively.

The first in line is the Sparkle A750 Titan, a triple-fan, 2.5-slot design based on Intel Arc A750 GPU. Featuring 8 GB of GDDR6 VRAM, this top-end A750 SKU is clocked at 2300 MHz, up from the factory's 2050 MHz frequency. Titan's smaller brother is Sparkle A750 Orc, a dual-fan, "2.2"-slot (we assume smaller than two and a half and bigger than two slots) GPU with the same A750 GPU; however, it clocked slightly lower at 2200 MHz. Both models feature single HDMI 2.0 and 3x DisplayPort 2.0 output ports and require two 8-pin PCI power connectors. Lastly, we have the Sparkle A380 Elf, a half-length, ITX-sized GPU that fits in two slots and has a single-fan cooler. It is based on Intel Arc A380 and has identical specifications without factory overclocks applied. Pricing and availability are currently unknown.

NTT-X, a retailer in Japan is advertising a strange promotion to its moneyed customers - a free Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition GPU with every purchase of an ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB OC Edition graphics card. You would normally expect a couple of extra digital download codes for video games as some sort of bonus incentive, but NTT-X has chosen a non-traditional approach to getting fancy silicon into clients' hands. The shop is selling the high-end ASUS card for just over $2300 (converted from the value in Japanese Yen), and mid-range Intel board will set you back roughly $350 (when sold separately). It seems that PC hardware prices in Japan tend to be higher when compared to USA market trends.

It is not really clear if this particular hardware outlet is experiencing slow sales for top-end RTX GeForce 40 series cards simply because of high asking prices, or it is having difficulty in shifting the Alchemist card due to wavering hardware buyer perception. Super enthusiasts with plenty of cash to spare on cutting edge tech will tend to purchase the best stuff available - perhaps NTT-X are offering their target audience a chance to construct a secondary or tertiary computer. These additional PCs could host the promotional Intel Arc A750 graphics card, with the retailer gaining further sales via customers buying more components for another build, be it for a compact computer or home theater/media center PC.

CD Projekt RED, the developer of Cyberpunk 2077, has advertised including various super sampling technologies like NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and now Intel XeSS supersampling. With the inclusion of XeSS version 1.1, Intel's Arc Alchemist graphics cards can record a significant performance uplift. Thanks to the Intel game blog, we compare XeSS enabled versus XeSS disabled, measuring the ability to play Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p Ultra settings with medium ray tracing enabled. The FPS comparison was conducted with Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition GPU, which was paired with Intel Core i9-13900K and 32 GB of RAM.

With XeSS off, the A750 GPU struggled and only reached 39 FPS. However, with XeSS set to performance, the number jumped to 67 FPS, making for a smooth user experience and gameplay. This is a 71% performance uplift, enabled by a new update in the game. Interestingly, Intel XeSS is computed on Arc's XMX Units, while NVIDIA and AMD compute their super sampling on shader units.

ASUS today introduced its newest laptops, with the latest Zenbook and Vivobook lineups during the Thincredible product launch event. Zenbook S 13 OLED (UX5304) debuted as the world's slimmest OLED ultraportable laptop—redefining what an ultraportable laptop can be. Equipped with the stunning new ASUS Lumina OLED displays, ASUS IceCool technology, and extremely durable and unique designs, the latest Zenbook and Vivobook lineups empower users with their outstanding sustainable performance and purposeful innovations.

Zenbook S 13 OLED is only 1 cm thin and weighs just 1 kg[iii]. This Intel Evo -certified laptop provides exceptional performance, battery life, and sustainability combined with an ASUS Lumina OLED display in an ultracompact chassis. Offering an all-day 63 Wh battery and full I/O ports, it's the perfect companion for those who need maximum portability to match their lifestyle. The Zenbook lineup also includes Zenbook 14X OLED (UX3404), a compact and high-performance portable laptop, and Zenbook 14 Flip OLED (UP3404), a convertible ultraportable laptop with immense versatility.

Intel has released a couple of new performance slides for the Arc A750, claiming better performance per dollar than RTX 3060 with the latest driver update. Intel has been pushing hard to improve its Arc GPU drivers, both fixing issues, bringing Game On support, and performance improvements. The latest Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4311 beta update brought several Game On optimizations as well as some performance uplifts, mostly focused on the Arc A750 and DirectX 12, ranging from 4 percent up to 63 percent, depending on the game and the resolution.

Although the Arc A750 has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory has less memory than the RTX 3060 which comes with 12 GB of GDDR6 memory, bear in mind that the Arc A750 has a 256-bit memory interface compared to a 192-bit one on the RTX 3060 12 GB graphics card, leaving it with a higher 512 GB/s maximum memory bandwidth. The Intel Arc A750 is also less expensive, retailing at $249, compared to RTX 3060 12 GB, which sells at around $350.

Intel today released the latest version of its Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Version 101.4257 beta adds Game On (day-zero) optimization for "Crime Boss." This particular release does not pack any "Fixed Issues" load, as it releases barely 5 days from the 101.4255 WHQL drivers. The company did, however, identify a dozen new issues as part of its "Known Issues" lists for Arc discrete GPUs, Iris Xe MAX GPUs, Core processor iGPUs (since 11th Gen), and its Arc Control software interface.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4257 beta