GUNNIR, one of the launch partners of the Arc "Alchemist" series GPUs in China, released the Arc A380 Index custom-design graphics card. This full-height graphics card features a slightly different cooler shroud design from the company's A380 Photon OC graphics card. The key "feature" here is that the card lacks any power connector, and runs the A380 at reference clock speeds. At stock settings, the TDP of the A380 is rated at 75 W, which means it was always designed for cards with just slot-power. The GUNNIR A380 Index ticks at reference speeds of up to 2.00 GHz engine clock, and 15.5 Gbps (GDDR6-effective) memory. In comparison the A380 Photon OC can go all the way up to 2.46 GHz, but at 92 W, for which it needs that power connector. Available now, the card is priced at RMB ¥1,199 (USD $172).

Here are the first pictures of a low-profile Intel Arc A380 graphics card by MSI. The half-height card is 2 slots thick, and is probably the first A380 card we've come across that appears to lack a power connector. The card surfaced on Japanese IT news portals, when a DAIV-built commercial desktop was disassembled revealing this low-profile card. The desktop combines a Core i7-12700 with this A380 card. The card appears to feature a complex aluminium fin-stack heatsink instead of a cheap aluminium monoblock one. The typical board power of A380 running at stock frequencies is exactly 75 W, and so MSI could build this card without any power connectors. Other board partners have been known to include at least a 6-pin connector to minimize power draw from the slot.

The Intel Arc A380 has recently been tested for crypto mining performance after support for the card was added in the latest release of Nanominer. The card achieved a hash rate of 10.2 MH/s while mining Ethereum Classic (ETC) without any optimizations at a TDP of 75 W equating to 0.136 MH/s per Watt which is significantly below other popular mining cards which can reach 0.38 MH/s per Watt. This limited performance can be partially attributed to the availability of only 8 Xe-Cores and the relatively small 96-bit memory bus. The card will struggle to mine Ethereum due to its limited 6 GB of VRAM while Ethereum Classic should work fine as demonstrated.

ASRock's Arc A380 "Alchemist" graphics card is now available for purchase on US retailer Newegg for USD $139.99. The card is sold and shipped by Newegg from the US-based warehouses, and isn't a marketplace listing that imports them from foreign retailers. The ASRock A380 Challenger is a close-to-reference card that runs the A380 at slightly overclocked speeds, draws power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, and uses a simple aluminium monoblock fan-heatsink to cool the GPU. Based on the Xe-HPG graphics architecture, the Arc A380 features 1,024 unified shaders, meets DirectX 12 Ultimate API specs (which includes ray tracing), and comes with readiness for the XeSS performance enhancement. The card has 6 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 96-bit memory bus.

Intel has been in the firing lines for the consecutive delays and general lack of clarity surrounding the launch of its Arc Alchemist family of discrete GPUs. Staggered availability has meant that the only currently available Arc GPU - the A380 - is still only available in the Chinese market, where the Internet café game is still strong. Intel drivers in particular have been fraught with bugs and as we know, software can bring even the most competent hardware to its knees. So there's maybe an echo of warning bells to the real state of Arc's software suite when Intel admits to having detected 43 different GPU driver bugs... While watching a review video from Gamers Nexus.

We've conducted our own review of Intel's Arc A380 (after importing it from China), and we did call to attention how we "encountered numerous bugs including bluescreens, corrupted desktop after startup, random systems hangs, system getting stuck during shutdown sequences, and more." Only AMD and NVIDIA seem to have an idea on just how complex the matter of breaking into and maintaining a position in this particular product segment takes. Intel itself is still in the process of learning just what that takes, as its own VP and general manager of the Visual Computing Group, Lisa Pearce, penned in a blog post.

The Intel Arc Alchemist A380 desktop graphics card is now available to pre-order in the USA with Newegg listing ASRock's Challenger ITX model for 139.99 USD and shipping from August 22nd. The ASRock Arc A380 Challenger ITX 6GB OC is a custom design featuring a singular cooling fan and a GPU clock speed of 2250 MHz running at a 75 W TDP paired with a single 8-pin power connector. The card features PCIe 4.0 connectivity and 8 Xe-Cores alongside triple DisplayPort 2.0 connectors and a single HDMI 2.0b. The card will compete with the similarly priced NVIDIA GTX 1650 and the AMD Radeon RX 6400 as seen in our review of the GUNNIR Photon Arc A380 model.

The second company to launch an Intel Arc A380 graphics card is somewhat surprisingly, if already rumoured, ASRock. The card in question goes under the somewhat awkward name of Intel Arc A380 Challenger ITX 6GB OC or A380 CLI 6GO for short. Unlike the Gunnir card, this is a rather compact, Mini-ITX friendly card that measures 190 x 124 x 39 mm and sports a single fan. Despite its diminutive size, it's still a dual slot card and ASRock outfitted it with a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, just as Gunnir did with its card.

The base frequency is somewhat higher at 2250 MHz vs. 2000 MHz for the Gunnir card, although ASRock doesn't mention the boost clock on its website. As the name implies, the card comes with 6 GB of GDDR6 memory with a rated data rate of either 15 or 15.5 Gbps, as both numbers are mentioned by ASRock, still on a 96-bit bus. The card has a single HDMI 2.0b port and three DisplayPort 2.0 ports with DSC. The card obviously has a PCIe 4.0 x8 interface as well. ASRock has implemented a 0dB mode where the fan stops spinning during low loads. According to Videocardz, the ASRock Intel Arc A380 Challenger ITX 6GB OC is already on sale in the PRC for the equivalent of US$192.

Remember that Limited Edition card that Intel was teasing at the end of March? Well, it turns out that it could very well be the Arc A750 card, at least based on a quick appearance of a card in Gamer Nexus' review of the Gunnir Arc A380 card. For a few seconds in the review video, Gamers Nexus was showing off a card that looked nigh on identical to the renders Intel showed back in March. There was no mention of any specs or anything else related, except that Gamer Nexus has tested the card and that it will presumably be getting its own video in the near future based on what was said in the video.

Based on leaked information, the Arc A750 GPU should feature 24 Xe cores, 3072 FP32 cores and it's expected to be paired with 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus. For reference, the Arc A380 features eight Xe cores, 1024 FP32 cores and the cards ship with 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 96-bit bus. In related news, Intel is said to be touring some gaming events in the US promoting its yet unavailable Arc graphics cards. LANFest Colorado is said to be the first stop, so if you're planning on attending, this could be your first chance to get some hands-on time with an Arc graphics card.

According to fresh benchmark numbers from someone on bilibili, Intel's Arc A380 cards perform even worse when paired with an AMD CPU compared to when paired with an Intel CPU. The card was tested using an AMD Ryzen 5 5600 on an ASUS TUF B550M motherboard paired with 16 GB of DDR4 3600 MHz memory. The Intel system it was tested against consisted of a Core i5-12400 on an ASUS TUF B660M motherboard with the same type of memory. Both test systems had resizable BAR support set to auto and above 4G decoding enabled. Windows 11 21H2 was also installed on both systems.

In every single game out of the 10 games tested, except League of Legends, the AMD system was behind the Intel system by anything from a mere one percent to as much as 15 percent. The worst performance disadvantage was in Forza Horizon 5 and Total War Three Kingdoms, both were 14 to 15 percent behind. The games that were tested, in order of the graph below are: League of Legends, Dota 2, Rainbow 6 Extraction, Watch Dogs Legions, Far Cry 6, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Total War Three Kingdoms, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, CS:GO and Forza Horizon 5. For comparison, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 was also used, but only tested on the Intel based system and the Arc A380 only beat it on Total War Three Kingdoms, albeit by a seven percent margin. It appears Intel has a lot of work to do when it comes to its drivers, but at last right now, mixing Intel Arc graphics cards and AMD processors seems to be a bad idea.

Intel's Arc A380 desktop graphics card is generally available in China, and real-world gaming benchmarks of the cards by independent media paint a vastly different picture than what we've been led on by synthetic benchmarks. The entry-mainstream graphics card, being sold under the equivalent of $160 in China, is shown beating the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 in 3DMark Port Royal and Time Spy benchmarks by a significant margin. The gaming results see it lose to even the RX 6400 in each of the six games tested by the source.

The tests in the graph below are in the order: League of Legends, PUBG, GTA V, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Forza Horizon 5, and Red Dead Redemption 2. We see that in the first three tests that are based on DirectX 11, the A380 is 22 to 26 percent slower than an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, and Radeon RX 6400. The gap narrows in DirectX 12 titles SoTR and Forza 5, where it's within 10% slower than the two cards. The card's best showing, is in the Vulkan-powered RDR 2, where it's 7% slower than the GTX 1650, and 9% behind the RX 6400. The RX 6500 XT would perform in a different league. With these numbers, and given that GPU prices are cooling down in the wake of the cryptocalypse 2022, we're not entirely sure what Intel is trying to sell at $160.