Wednesday, June 15th 2022
Intel Arc A380 Desktop Graphics Card Launched in China at $153 (equivalent)
Intel officially launched the Arc A380 "Alchemist" entry-mainstream desktop graphics card in China, priced at RMB ¥1,030, including VAT, which roughly converts to USD $153. The Arc A380 "Alchemist" is based on the Xe-HPG graphics architecture, and the smaller DG2-128 (ACM-G11) silicon, which is built on the TSMC N6 (6 nm) silicon fabrication process.
The A380 desktop GPU is endowed with 8 Xe Cores, or 128 EU (execution units), which work out to 1,024 unified shaders. The chip features a 96-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface, running 6 GB of memory. Despite these hardware specs, you get full DirectX 12 Ultimate capability, including ray tracing, and the XeSS performance enhancement. There are also several content-creation accelerators, including Intel XMX, and AV1 hardware-encode capabilities.
Source:
VideoCardz
The A380 desktop GPU is endowed with 8 Xe Cores, or 128 EU (execution units), which work out to 1,024 unified shaders. The chip features a 96-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface, running 6 GB of memory. Despite these hardware specs, you get full DirectX 12 Ultimate capability, including ray tracing, and the XeSS performance enhancement. There are also several content-creation accelerators, including Intel XMX, and AV1 hardware-encode capabilities.
45 Comments on Intel Arc A380 Desktop Graphics Card Launched in China at $153 (equivalent)
They're launching only in China because they have very few units and they're nothing special compared to AMD or Nvidia so there is very little incentive to waste money on shipping.
1060 performance for 150$ in 2022 is insane, is stupid
The reason is probably the same. The product is not ready to be released and doesn't meet the hype Intel has been spinning. But they are already way behind their roadmap, so they had to launch something.
And by launching it this way they can show their shareholders they are "back on track", and there will be no widely shared negative reviews since product is officially not available outside China. Maybe we'll see a test by Anandtech or some similar obscure review site, once famous but now almost forgotten since they don't get their review samples any more - since they dared to publish actual reviews, not commercials.
But the card has potential, when driver works the performance seems very good (if we suppose that the 230fps DOTA2 result is Lowest Setting, then it's 1.25X faster than GTX 1060 and 3.38X faster than 5700G.Deduct 10% or whatever if they used a 12900KS then it's around 1.13X faster than GTX 1060.
Videocardz reports that Intel claims that it's 25% faster than RX 6400, but i wouldn't hold my breath, i have to see the context and how it's been communicated to reach conclusions.
Having seen snipets of the mobile performance, RX6400+25% seems doubtful for today's driver state.
Edit: Regarding price, even if we suppose it's 5% slower than RX6400 and the price $149-159 then it's much better value since it has 6GB and better media engine, but RX6400 is such an awful offer, i would imagine that the vast majority of RX 6400 that are being sold is LP editions where the consumer doesn't have good choices anymore. (With ARC there will be competition from now on)
If the price is $149 it may not need even a price cut when navi33 launches depending on navi33's price, (in the below example current models SRPs droped around -25%):
on media capabilities offer 150us for AV1-H265-VP9-H264 decode and encode capabilities meanwhile rx 6400/6500 dont offer any encode capabilities and dont decode AV1 and gtx 1050/1650 (outdated products) only offer H265-H264 encode capabilities and dont decode AV1 again outdated product
personally consider this a huge step for improve actual gpu situation and stay prepare some bucks to help intel (i stay very interested on arc a310) and punish amd (cutted laptop products like rx 6400/6500, few vram and very expensive) and nvidia (outdated and expensive products)
in my case use linux mainly, dont care newer games, dont care raytracing, dont care scalers but stay very interested on av1 encode hardware
:)
Edit, it seems Intel claim 25% better performance per yuan compared to rx 6400 (1030 vs 1199 yuan), but still the card could be the best offer in its class. 1650 non-S has roughly the same performance with rx 6400 on pci-e 4.