Laptops with Arc Graphics Nowhere in Sight, Intel Says Wait Till June

[btarunr]

Intel in March 2022 kicked off its ambitious campaign to grab a slice of the consumer graphics market, with its Arc "Alchemist" line of discrete GPUs, based on the Xe-HPG graphics architecture. The announcement mentioned an immediate availability of at least the entry-level Arc 3-series GPU models in notebooks generally available. These GPU models include the Arc A350M and Arc A370M. People on social media are beginning to ask Intel why these notebooks are nowhere in sight, and the company responded.

In response to one such query by a user, Intel Support stated that laptops with Arc will be available "by the end of the second quarter of 2022." This would put general availability in June 2022, two months from now. Interestingly, this hasn't stopped laptop manufacturers from raking in pre-orders, with the likes of the Acer Swift X and Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro up for "grabs." You can "purchase" the Swift X, but shipping dates are stated to be as late as May 23 (now pushed to June 13).



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[usiname]

Now the Intel's fanboys have two more months to live in delusion, maybe more? After all this is nor the first, nor the second time Intel postponed with another quarter

 

[Crackong]

Again,

Vapourware is stillll Vapourware bois.

 

[Chaitanya]

Should we all start blaming Raja already? Too many delays and no deliverables, wondering how long before management decides to cut fat.

 

[Tek-Check]

I am confused by these delays and marketing shenanigans. Can any of these companies launch a proper product this year and on time?

 

[R-T-B]

I am confused by these delays and marketing shenanigans. Can any of these companies launch a proper product this year and on time?

Considering the past year as evidence... no.

 

[swirl09]

I figuratively joked that these cards were going to show up 10 minutes before the next gen drops. I guess its literally going to be 10 minutes.

 

[Crackong]

I am confused by these delays and marketing shenanigans. Can any of these companies launch a proper product this year and on time?

This year...maybe
On time? No.

 

[looniam]

lol

amd's marketing scared them back.

 

[Outback Bronze]

Who's sick of the waiting game?

 

[watzupken]

In my opinion, the delay is unlikely to be supply related. So with them kicking the can down the road quarter after quarter, I can’t help but think that the performance/ stability is going to be an issue. At this rate, I will not be surprised that ARC will run straight into a wall competing against RDNA3 and Ada Lovelace. AMD and Nvidia do not need to have a strong supply at launch. As long as the product appears to perform very well as compared to current gen of GPUs, I think that will be the nail in the coffin for the first gen of ARC GPUs.

 

[ZoneDymo]

Should we all start blaming Raja already? Too many delays and no deliverables, wondering how long before management decides to cut fat.

Not really sure why Raja gets all this hate, the man has been in the business long enough to have earned some respect imo

 

[Vayra86]

Should we all start blaming Raja already? Too many delays and no deliverables, wondering how long before management decides to cut fat.

Been doing that since he works at Intel. So far so good

Not really sure why Raja gets all this hate, the man has been in the business long enough to have earned some respect imo

What exactly is the man known for? I have yet to see a clear design win coming from him, but maybe I missed something?

Marketing wise he is a complete and utter fail, that's clear enough though

 

[chstamos]

The way they're completely, utterly, tragically failing to deliver on schedule has a silver lining, though. Going into it as late as they seem to be, and as close to next gen cards that will obliterate first gen Arc performance-wise, with mature drivers at that, intel might simply have to buy market share by hugely undercutting on prices. 1080p full detail AAA gaming on a hundred bucks, maybe? Maybe I'm being too optimistic.

They're not going to be competing on mid-range and high-end on first gen Arc by any stretch of the imagination, this much is now certain. They screwed that up, royally.

I'm still keeping some hope that they will compete on the lowest end, though. If intel could come up with RX580 performance for a cool 100 dollars, with acceptable drivers, I would still consider that a major win on at least one market segment.

 

[Kaotik]

You might want to check their next tweet too, they apologized for wrong information - the Samsung laptop with Arc is already available in Korea and will come available sooner in other regions too

 

[ZoneDymo]

Been doing that since he works at Intel. So far so good


What exactly is the man known for? I have yet to see a clear design win coming from him, but maybe I missed something?

Marketing wise he is a complete and utter fail, that's clear enough though

Raja Koduri - Wikipedia

active since 1996 in the space, its not like he just entered the scene or anything, he has been around long enough to earn some respect imo.

Apart from that, is he really a complete and utter fail? because Im pretty sure people are rather obsessed with intel's offering, being negative or positive a large number of people cant stop talking about what isnt even released yet.

 

[bug]

Fwiw, when I buy a laptop, I usually aim for the crappiest iGPU I can find. For mobile needs that will be enough for Internet browsing and the occasional text editor. If it can decode video in the hardware, even better.
So, while still waiting to see what Arc is up to, mobile SKUs get a definite meh from me.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

You might want to check their next tweet too, they apologized for wrong information - the Samsung laptop with Arc is already available in Korea and will come available sooner in other regions too

you'll need a link to source that tidbit.

 

[Vayra86]

Raja Koduri - Wikipedia

active since 1996 in the space, its not like he just entered the scene or anything, he has been around long enough to earn some respect imo.

Apart from that, is he really a complete and utter fail? because Im pretty sure people are rather obsessed with intel's offering, being negative or positive a large number of people cant stop talking about what isnt even released yet.

Well read about it then. Enabling Retina displays for Apple; ergo, some implementation of upscaling within that resolution, is his biggest feat of arms. Other than that? Im not seeing it Rather everywhere he went, stuff went tits up shortly after: S3, ATI, RTG and now Intel.

There are a LOT of senior engineers that have done a whole lot more for being in the biz nearly 30 years... I think this is a typical case of someone who can sell himself well before most other things.

And as for us talking about unreleased content again... lol? Its not us producing those PR stories every other day is it? See its a lot easier for Raja or Intel to just STFU, but they are so keen on keeping people attached to their new release they keep shoveling empty messages at us.

Remember Poor Volta , nobody asked for that either... but it killed Vega right then and there, it backfired massively.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Not a good sign for the availability of the dedicated cards, if the laptop channel is starved and extensively preordered. Still, I would just tell people to buy an AMD laptop, Radeon graphics are much more mature and you usually want a modicum of reliability on your workhorse system (and that tends to be the ole' laptop when everything else fails).

I'm looking forward to the dGPUs, I want one of those Arc LEs (major Vega FE vibes). Intel can take their sweet time, I got bills to pay in the meantime

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

So, I'm guessing there is a problem either with the manufacturing of the laptops or sommething specifically wrong with the cards, like maybe super shitty drivers?

 

[Dr. Dro]

So, I'm guessing there is a problem either with the manufacturing of the laptops or sommething specifically wrong with the cards, like maybe super shitty drivers?

My personal guess is a combination of raw (not even undercooked, raw) software and TSMC N6 allocation at present, which would hardly meet the "it just works" criteria that is valued by the budget laptop segment these products will release on.

I think Arc will have a newness issue for the first year, even if Intel manages to have full API compliance in their drivers and relative stability, they will still have to deal with a lot of games outright blacklisting the 8086 hardware ID (because of how notoriously bad their graphics were over the years) and the distinct lack of band-aid fixes for all of the jank, spec violations and unusual practices that AMD and NVIDIA have covered driver-side over the past two decades or so.

I find this product exciting but even as a veteran beta tester I would hardly daily this myself

 

[bug]

So, I'm guessing there is a problem either with the manufacturing of the laptops or sommething specifically wrong with the cards, like maybe super shitty drivers?

Silicon probably tapped out too late to finish (and validate) a design in a world where sourcing materials/parts has become harder than it used to be.

 

[HD64G]

Who would have predicted another delay on this eternally delayed GPU series?

Most possibly that they discovered both hw problems that are solving by additional tapeouts and drivers that need much more polish.

 

[bug]

Who would have predicted another delay on this eternally delayed GPU series?

Most possibly that they discovered both hw problems that are solving by additional tapeouts and drivers that need much more polish.

There is no actual delay here. Read Intel's announcement, it's so vague, the first thing I thought about after reading it was "they put so much effort into not mentioning actual products availability".
It's all good from a business point of view though. Significant sales only begin with the back to school season. Plenty of time till then for us to read reviews and Intel to fix their drivers