Question Arc A380 Availability

rox11

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Jul 11, 2013
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When will Intel Arc A380 cards become generally available? The only one I've found is the ASRock card and it's on back order at Newegg. Are other vendors going to start to offer this very competitively priced card?
 
That's a very difficult question to answer right now, since INTEL has not given any updates on the availability of it's ARC gaming GPUs (or a concrete worldwide release date). First, the ARC 380 launched in ASIA, but now we can find some of the custom cards listed over at Newegg from ASUS and GUNNIR.

Whether these cards are still in STOCK I don't know, since I haven't browsed/searched Newegg's website for ARC GPUs yet.

Also, we haven't heard of any other GPU vendor/brand interested in making this entry-level A380 card. But it would have been nice if other AIBs also release their custom card designs, and these ARC GPUs should also be available Worldwide, and not just in the US/UK or ASIA.

So far there have officially been two or three AIB partners who have confirmed custom designs of Intel’s upcoming (well, technically already released in China) Arc A380 graphics card, GUNNIR, MSI and ASRock.

While we did, of course, expect more AIB partners to be confirmed over the coming weeks, we have to admit that it was a little unclear as to whether any more would choose to make their debut in China, or whether they would wait until the formal Western release.

BTW, MSI's card is only available in a prebuilt PC sold exclusively on Chinese JD website, unless I'm mistaken. We're also not sure if MSI's product will ever see the US/EU market, or it likely will remain a China-only product.

As mentioned before, you won't be able to buy MSI's new Intel Arc A380 6G graphics card anywhere yet, as it's only available inside of the MSI pre-built PC that is sold exclusively through Chinese etailer JD.com.
 
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rox11

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Thanks for the very detailed response! I appreciate it. Bummer ... I was hoping to do a cheap upgrade to a mid- to low-range computer, but doesn't seem to be possible yet. What is it about Intel that they never seem to get it "right," at least with their graphics (really a rhetorical question)? Even when they - for once - try to compete seriously with nVidia and AMD, they get it wrong! Ugh.
 
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What is it about Intel that they never seem to get it "right," at least with their graphics

INTEL is actually a new player/competitor in the discrete gaming GPU market segment (not counting any previous cancelled, and/or released mobile XE discrete SKUs). Unlike AMD and Nvidia who have a decade of experience with gaming GPUs and drivers, Intel has just entered as a third player. Just give them some time.

It will take some time for Intel to adopt to the GPU market. Also, creating a NEW hardware from scratch is no simple feat, including developing the architecture which is going to power the GPUs. Intel also has a lot of work to do with it's GPU drivers as well, optimizing them for different APIs (DX12/11, VULKAN) etc.

FWIW, to recap some history, Intel also cancelled plans for a discrete "Larrabee" graphics card back in 2010, because it could not produce one that was competitive with existing GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA in current games. Why Intel lacked the foresight to stop from even getting to this point is tough to say.

Larrabee was a great idea. But execution matters just as much as innovation. This is where Intel failed. Throughout its 4-year lifecycle, Larrabee was plagued by miscommunication, a rushed development cycle, and fundamental issues with its architecture. In retrospect, there were red flags right from the beginning.

Gaming wasn't even mentioned as a use case in Larrabee's initial announcement. However, almost immediately after, Intel started talking about Larrabee's gaming capabilities, setting expectations sky-high. The company may have been too optimistic or genuinely lacked the experience in building discrete GPUs, something it hadn’t done in more than a decade.

I have a feeling that the next ARC Xe2 GPU series codenamed as BATTLEMAGE would be a game changer unlike ARC Alchemist cards.

small_intel_arc_codenames.jpeg
 
I have a feeling that the next ARC Xe2 GPU series codenamed as BATTLEMAGE would be a game changer unlike ARC Alchemist cards.

Slight update. To quote my own post, you might find this article interesting/informative. Just thought of letting you know. But the main point is the worldwide availability of all the AIB custom cards when Battlemage comes out, unlike Alchemist, though Intel has enough time to sort out any supply/production issues by then.

Intel’s Next-Gen Arc Battlemage GPUs Are “Substantially Better” Than Where Alchemist Was In Its Current Stage

Intel's Next-Gen Arc Battlemage GPUs Are "Substantially Better" Than Where Alchemist Was In Its Current Stage (wccftech.com)
 
I really hope they can improve their offerings in the future. Right know I wouldn't purchase , still too many issues. We need more players in the game. Hopefully Intel is in for the long haul.

Yes, actually Intel still has a lot of work to do. Their hardware architecture is good, but the GPU drivers still seriously need an improvement. Intel actually made a mistake by making Resizable BAR/ReBAR feature a compulsion for better performance uplift.

IMO, I think a lot of gamers who buy low-end entry level, as well as mid-range/mainstream cards are mostly on OLDER gen systems, so making ReBAR a requirement makes little sense, as it would cripple the adoption rate for INTEL to some extent, if not in a large scale.

I'm not sure why Intel made the ReBar tech feature a necessity, because even Windows 7 OS users won't be able to play games on an ARC GPU (despite Microsoft ending support of the OS in January 2020). Though, majority of the users are using Win 10 OS these days.

But Resizable BAR is more of a concern, when it comes to ARC GPU support, rather than the OS itself. Since I'm also using a 4'th gen Intel core i7 4790 processor, buying an ARC GPU makes no sense.

Only Intel 10th Generation Comet Lake, 11th Generation Rocket Lake, and 12th Generation Alder Lake processors support that feature. "Without ReBAR, the Arc A770's performance, on average, plummeted to 77% at 1080p (1920x1080), 76% at 1440p (2560x1440), and 80% at 4K (3840x2160).

Arc owners who don't have a system with ReBAR are essentially losing almost a quarter of the performance from their graphics cards."


Arc A770 Loses Up to 24 Percent Performance Without Resizable Bar | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)

https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-arc-a7-gpus-lose-1-4-of-their-performance-without-rebar

ARC-A7-GPU.jpg
 
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Dark Lord of Tech

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Yes, actually Intel still has a lot of work to do. Their hardware architecture is good, but the GPU drivers still seriously need an improvement. Intel actually made a mistake by making Resizable BAR/ReBAR feature a compulsion for better performance uplift.

IMO, I think a lot of gamers who buy low-end entry level, as well as mid-range/mainstream cards are mostly on OLDER gen systems, so making ReBAR a requirement makes little sense, as it would cripple the adoption rate for INTEL to some extent, if not in a large scale.

I'm not sure why Intel made the ReBar tech feature a necessity, because even Windows 7 OS users won't be able to play games on an ARC GPU (despite Microsoft ending support of the OS in January 2020). Though, majority of the users are using Win 10 OS these days.

But Resizable BAR is more of a concern, when it comes to ARC GPU support, rather than the OS itself. Since I'm also using a 4'th gen Intel core i7 4790 processor, buying an ARC GPU makes no sense.

Only Intel 10th Generation Comet Lake, 11th Generation Rocket Lake, and 12th Generation Alder Lake processors support that feature. "Without ReBAR, the Arc A770's performance, on average, plummeted to 77% at 1080p (1920x1080), 76% at 1440p (2560x1440), and 80% at 4K (3840x2160).

Arc owners who don't have a system with ReBAR are essentially losing almost a quarter of the performance from their graphics cards."


Arc A770 Loses Up to 24 Percent Performance Without Resizable Bar | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)

https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-arc-a7-gpus-lose-1-4-of-their-performance-without-rebar

ARC-A7-GPU.jpg


I agree , your spot on about the BAR/ReBAR issue.
 
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