White shroud, backplate and fans, but Sparkle kept the blue PCB?

Yawn.

Sorry Sparkle, Arc is creeping towards 2 years old at this point, and it was an underwhelming midrange product with a lot of caveats to offput buyers for most of its first year.

A white edition isn't going to change anything, even if the drivers are in a much better state now than they were 18 months ago. The biggest benefit ARC had to offer was cheap access to 16GB VRAM but these Sparkle models are only 8GB.

wNotyarDWhite shroud, backplate and fans, but Sparkle kept the blue PCB?

I was about to post the same comments, but you beat me to it...this crap pisses me off to no end :)

Chrispy_Yawn.

Sorry Sparkle, Arc is creeping towards 2 years old at this point, and it was an underwhelming midrange product with a lot of caveats to offput buyers for most of its first year.

A white edition isn't going to change anything, even if the drivers are in a much better state now than they were 18 months ago. The biggest benefit ARC had to offer was cheap access to 16GB VRAM but these Sparkle models are only 8GB.

^^THIS^^....8GB cards are soooo 2018-ish, there's no way in hell I would buy one today :(

bonehead123I was about to post the same comments, but you beat me to it...this crap pisses me off to no end :)

And Chrispy beat you to the yawn :laugh:

wNotyarDWhite shroud, backplate and fans, but Sparkle kept the blue PCB?

Same as it ever was!

Chrispy_The biggest benefit ARC had to offer was cheap access to 16GB VRAM but these Sparkle models are only 8GB.

The biggest benefit to Arc has been the RTX 4060 and RX 7600/XT being worse for more or equal money. Intel may have launched late, but their competition is asleep at the wheel in the mid-range.

FouquinThe biggest benefit to Arc has been the RTX 4060 and RX 7600/XT being worse for more or equal money. Intel may have launched late, but their competition is asleep at the wheel in the mid-range.

I won't argue about the 4060 or 7600/XT. They were overpriced and still are - but at $250 the 3060 12GB is still available and at $200 the RX6600 is unquestionably the best sub-$200 card, both have always been superior price/performance options to the 8GB A750 and the A770 never made any sense unless it was the 16GB variant, which is another price tier altogether.

The issue was never really price/performance though - because even though Intel were competitive enough, it was the caveats that hurt their prospects. High power draw, awful launch drivers that are still inferior drivers to AMD/Nvidia today, despite being "in a better state" and new games releasing occasionally that are completely broken on Arc until Intel add a driver fix (Starfield didn't work on Arc at all for about 3-4 weeks, right?)

Arc wasn't bad for Intel's first stab at the dGPU market but it was a troubled first-gen that sorely needs the second generation soon, and to be a home run! AMD and Nvidia's stagnant mediocrity in the midrange is a perfect opportunity for Intel to capitalise but there's no real news and Battle Mage isn't even at the "leaked gaming benchmarks" stage yet.

Chrispy_$200 the RX6600 is unquestionably the best sub-$200 card, both have always been superior price/performance options to the 8GB A750

With the A750 now at $200 in the US, and drivers as of January, you should look at that ratio again. The A750 is consistently 10-15% faster than a 6600, sometimes equal to or faster than a 6600 XT, and between equal or ~5% faster than a 3060 12GB. The even cheaper A580 ($170) has grown up to be the performance peer to cards like the 6600.

Chrispy_new games releasing occasionally that are completely broken on Arc until Intel add a driver fix (Starfield didn't work on Arc at all for about 3-4 weeks, right?)

Because Bethesda never sent them a preview copy to even develop drivers for the game. Intel had to ship updated d3d12 config files to inject into Starfield just to make it run right because Bethesda couldn't be fucked to fix their game. I reported on that whole fiasco and was front and center doing testing. Once Intel had access to the game they got it running in a matter of days, but they still had to wait for Bethesda to update to a d3d12 core that wasn't MONTHS out of date.

Vermintide 2, a game built on a dead engine from 2018 with only supplemental custom updates, had a newer d3d12 config distribution than Starfield launched with in 2023.

imo Intel just brought too little too late to the market. It's rare that I even see someone talking about buying an Arc card and the Steam Hardware Survey makes it pretty clear. Out of the top 80 dGPUs listed Intel Arc doesn't even appear. Maybe Battlemage later this year will bring something better.

FouquinWith the A750 now at $200 in the US, and drivers as of January, you should look at that ratio again. The A750 is consistently 10-15% faster than a 6600, sometimes equal to or faster than a 6600 XT, and between equal or ~5% faster than a 3060 12GB. The even cheaper A580 ($170) has grown up to be the performance peer to cards like the 6600.

Perhaps, but I find the claim "consistently 10-15% faster than a 6600" dubious.

As of 5 months ago it was all over the place, slower than a 6600 as often as it was faster, for an average that was similar, but hugely inconsistent - which isn't a compliment.

Steve at GamersNexus did a big revisit a couple of months ago and his conclusion echos the same problems:
"Sometimes it works phenomenally well and we're really impressed by how much ground they've gained, and other times it's still just functionally, utterly broken"

So it's a dice roll. If it works, it's competitive - like you say, it can be up to 15% faster than similar offerings from AMD last generation, but it's just broken in too many mainstream games to be recommendable. Don't forget there's also the whole DX9 and DX11 support where it's adequate for those older games but nowhere near as smooth an experience as it is for the competition with native DX9 and DX11 support.

Chrispy_As of 5 months ago it was all over the place, slower than a 6600 as often as it was faster, for an average that was similar, but hugely inconsistent - which isn't a compliment.

And it isn't 5 months ago anymore. Steve's conclusion is based on a couple outlier games being not great, but if you read through all those charts you can see the cards are placing much higher these days, and much more consistently.

Chrispy_The biggest benefit ARC had to offer was cheap access to 16GB VRAM but these Sparkle models are only 8GB.

The A770 box says 16GB.

FouquinAnd it isn't 5 months ago anymore. Steve's conclusion is based on a couple outlier games being not great, but if you read through all those charts you can see the cards are placing much higher these days, and much more consistently.

Even not being 5 months ago, I bet the situation is still identical, a couple more games work and have easy ways to fix, but a lot of games still don't. That's the thing Intel is competing against, decades of driver support and hot fixes to make crappy code runnable, that's the leg up AMD and Nvidia have and will continue to have for a good while.

For me having to fix stuff is part of the fun of playing old pc games, but it's not for everyone.

FouquinAnd it isn't 5 months ago anymore. Steve's conclusion is based on a couple outlier games being not great, but if you read through all those charts you can see the cards are placing much higher these days, and much more consistently.

The GN article was far more in-depth, 2 months ago. What if you want to play Total Warhammer, Starfield, ForzaH? These aren't what I'd call niche games so they need to work properly. If every reviewer/streamer's selection of 10-20 games has an outlier or two, then there's a huge number of games that are just borked on Arc, and those are popular, big-budget AAA games that aren't working. What chance do you have of your indie games library not running into issues?

I want intel to succeed, but charity won't do that - they're a $135,000,000,000 company so they need to win me over on actual product performance and compatibility. 1st-Gen Arc still isn't close, all I will do is acknowledge that it's much better now than it was at launch - they just need to keep improving until they are viable enough to recommend over the competition not for performance/$ in cherry-picked games where their driver isn't a dumpster fire, but in all games, past and present.

Probably the right time to use that well known meme:

Son: Mom, can we get ASUS ROG?
Mom: We have ROG at home!
ROG at home:

trsttteThe A770 box says 16GB.

Good spot, I was going on the two spec sheets at the bottom of the press release on the assumption one was the 770 and one was the 750, turns out they're both 750s

All white card with a blue pcb.... no thank you :banghead:

Honestly the white on blue PCB is a really nice aesthetic that I'd like to see more often (Primarily white with a hint of color sprinkled in).

GodisanAtheistHonestly the white on blue PCB is a really nice aesthetic that I'd like to see more often (Primarily white with a hint of color sprinkled in).

Just limits the color matching. Sure, it would work in a Sonic theme, rather have a neutral color,black, white, grey etc.