News Intel Discontinues Arc A770 Limited Edition GPU

[Admin]

Intel has announced that the chipmaker has discontinued the Arc A770 Limited Edition gaming graphics card.

Intel Discontinues Arc A770 Limited Edition GPU : Read more

 

[SSGBryan]

Happy mine arrived today, they have been hard to come by for a while.

 

[InvalidError]

The A750's price bouncing back from $200 to $250 was a pretty solid hint that Intel may have been tightening supply.

Wonder how long supplies are going to last. Then again, I don't imagine demand being particularly high.

 

[vern72]

Wow. AMD didn't give up when their first generation of x86 chips weren't up to par.

 

[SSGBryan]

Well, the LE does stand for Limited Edition.

It is better than what I have now, and I expect it to hold me over until Q4 of 2024, when we should be seeing battlemage.

 

[SSGBryan]

Wow. AMD didn't give up when their first generation of x86 chips weren't up to par.

AMD had CPU chips as their core business.

Intel is looking to move into a new market.

 

[JamesJones44]

Wow. AMD didn't give up when their first generation of x86 chips weren't up to par.

Unless I missed some bit of news it doesn't sound like Intel is giving up on the dGPU market. The article states

Instead, the chipmaker can now prioritize silicon production for its AIB partners

Sounds more like they are only discounting for their own design.

 

[Unolocogringo]

Many of us are still on the fence with Intel graphics cards.
This is their third foray into the D-GPU market.
They abandoned their first attempt shortly after launch. about a year or so, then abandoned the second attempt after releasing it as pro only.

Will Intel abandon their customers again? for the third time?

 

[PEnns]

"...so discontinuing the Arc A770 Limited Edition gives the chipmaker an easy exit and sticks to what it does best, producing silicon."

Did I miss something?? Intel won't be producing that specific model. That doesn't automatically mean Intel is done with making GPUs!!

Actually, for first generation GPUs, Intel's were quite decent!!

 

[BFG-9000]

Actually, for first generation GPUs, Intel's were quite decent!!

I had their first gen GPU the i740, and while it was faster than their first IGP (the μPD7220 licensed from NEC), decent was not how I would describe it, not even for 1998. They thought AGP was so fast that there wasn't any need for much local memory.

Arc is their 2nd gen, if you don't count Xe. So you could say they didn't give up either.

 

[bit_user]

The A750's price bouncing back from $200 to $250 was a pretty solid hint that Intel may have been tightening supply.

Wonder how long supplies are going to last. Then again, I don't imagine demand being particularly high.

I hope the "refresh" still happens. Maybe that's why they're trying to whittle down their inventory.

Given that Battlemage won't launch for more than a year, maybe they found enough bugs & bottlenecks in Alchemist to fix that they can unlock a half generation's worth of performance. Even with the latest drivers, it's still performing well below where its specs would suggest. So, I think it's plausible there are some hardware bugs holding it back.

 

[thisisaname]

Not making both the 8 and 16 GB versions?

 

[InvalidError]

Even with the latest drivers, it's still performing well below where its specs would suggest. So, I think it's plausible there are some hardware bugs holding it back.

The A7xx performs anywhere between roughly as expected from the specs to only a laughable fraction, which means the hardware is able to perform as-is when the software planets align well enough.

If Intel launches v2 Alchemist silicon that performs far more predictably than the v1 stuff, people stuck with v1 hardware may get pretty cheezed about it possibly to the point of starting a class action for their known-bad-wontfix hardware.

 

[heickel.ramadhan]

They never being sold worldwide, so nothing changes here


Mostly west market only, it never did reach asian market, AIB model on the other hand is everywhere

 

[dalek1234]

Many of us are still on the fence with Intel graphics cards.
This is their third foray into the D-GPU market.
They abandoned their first attempt shortly after launch. about a year or so, then abandoned the second attempt after releasing it as pro only.

Will Intel abandon their customers again? for the third time?

My bet is that they will eventually abandon it for the 3rd time.

 

[Pollopesca]

Kind of a shame. I got my hands on a A770 LE before a friend installed it in his rig. The build quality is top notch. The heft and clean design of the cooler makes my 3070 look/feel like cheap Chinese trash. Too bad the performance couldn’t catch up, or I may have picked one up myself.

 

[bit_user]

If Intel launches v2 Alchemist silicon that performs far more predictably than the v1 stuff, people stuck with v1 hardware may get pretty cheezed about it possibly to the point of starting a class action for their known-bad-wontfix hardware.

Companies are always releasing better products. Maybe it's a redesign, but sometimes just a refresh. Early adopters get to enjoy newer tech for longer than people at the trailing edge, so it's not as though they got nothing for being early. Also, when the refresh launches, it'll cost more than the original revision cards. Finally, the original Alchemist launched against RDNA2 and Ampere, whereas the Alchemist Refresh needs updates to compete against RDNA3 and Ada.

Look at the Pentium 4 - Intel released 3 generations, all sold as "Pentium 4". Should the Willamette owners have sued when Northwood got released? I think that would be a very tricky case to litigate.

If you really want to know what getting cheezed looks like, go back to when Nvidia launched the GTX 1080 Ti and see what the Titan XP card owners thought of it. Did any stop buying Nvidia cards, after that? I sure doubt it!

 

[InvalidError]

Companies are always releasing better products. Maybe it's a redesign, but sometimes just a refresh. Early adopters get to enjoy newer tech for longer than people at the trailing edge, so it's not as though they got nothing for being early.

If Intel releases an Alchemist refresh that performs significantly better than the original almost exclusively due to fixing hardware bugs, then it means the original hardware was fundamentally broken and first-gen buyers may have a case for being sold defective goods.

 

[bit_user]

If Intel releases an Alchemist refresh that performs significantly better than the original almost exclusively due to fixing hardware bugs, then it means the original hardware was fundamentally broken and first-gen buyers may have a case for being sold defective goods.

If the "bugs" only impacted performance, then it would be hard to litigate, because Intel never guaranteed any performance levels of the original product and would simply characterize the fixes as "improvements".

 

[SyCoREAPER]

Not surprised. Intel hasn't pushed their cards on the market, I don't recall seeing commercials, the driver blunder at launch, etc..

This isn't the right move. This tells customers "we've give up" and User confidence will be zero in the future.

 

[SSGBryan]

Not surprised. Intel hasn't pushed their cards on the market, I don't recall seeing commercials, the driver blunder at launch, etc..

This isn't the right move. This tells customers "we've give up" and User confidence will be zero in the future.

Intel has stopped selling their reference card, LE stands for limited edition after all. They have made it clear that they are continuing to sell to AiB partners.

Battlemage is at least a year out, and with the way that AMD & Nvidia are delivering less for the dollar, Intel still has opportunities.

As far as my use case, I have seen benchmarks with Diablo IV - 60+ fps at 4k before XeSS. That makes it a no brainer for me.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

That's fine but if first party (Intel) puts no effort into their product, who will want to buy it from a 3rd party/AiB?

Its like buying anything from Google and having them discontinue it a year later. You are making a risk buying into an ecosystem (Intel d-GPU) that is barely established. I think it would be wise for them to at least replace the LE with something slightly comperable with LTS

 

[SSGBryan]

That's fine but if first party (Intel) puts no effort into their product, who will want to buy it from a 3rd party/AiB?

Its like buying anything from Google and having them discontinue it a year later. You are making a risk buying into an ecosystem (Intel d-GPU) that is barely established. I think it would be wise for them to at least replace the LE with something slightly comperable with LTS

What risk? It isn't a computing ecosystem.

A computing ecosystem is os based. Let me run down all of the computer ecosystems I have moved through:
DrDos/Geos (1988 - 1990)
DrDos/Windows 3.0 (1990 - 1992)
OS/2 v. 2 - 4.52 (1992 - 2001)
OSX 10.0 - 10.10 (2001 - 2019)
Windows 10. (2019 - present)

I didn't include my various leaps into linux, but my 1st version was a pre-1.0 kernel. It will never be ready for prime time.

We are talking about a video card running on Windows. I have moved from back and forth between AMD to Nvidia for years, and now I am trying Intel.

I spent $349 for a 16Gb video card that performs (currently) between an RTX 3060 & an RTX 3060ti. I'll be getting driver improvements for at least another year. I have a high refresh rate 1440p panel, and I don't see myself moving to 4k anytime soon.

If battlemage never releases to desktop, what have I actually lost? Nothing.

A few years down the road, it will be time to retire the card, and I'll see what I need, what is available, and how much it costs.

 

[bit_user]

I didn't include my various leaps into linux, but my 1st version was a pre-1.0 kernel. It will never be ready for prime time.

I also dabbled with Linux, pre-1.0. ChromeOS isn't ready for prime time?

 

[SyCoREAPER]

What risk? It isn't a computing ecosystem.

A computing ecosystem is os based. Let me run down all of the computer ecosystems I have moved through:
DrDos/Geos (1988 - 1990)
DrDos/Windows 3.0 (1990 - 1992)
OS/2 v. 2 - 4.52 (1992 - 2001)
OSX 10.0 - 10.10 (2001 - 2019)
Windows 10. (2019 - present)

I didn't include my various leaps into linux, but my 1st version was a pre-1.0 kernel. It will never be ready for prime time.

We are talking about a video card running on Windows. I have moved from back and forth between AMD to Nvidia for years, and now I am trying Intel.

I spent $349 for a 16Gb video card that performs (currently) between an RTX 3060 & an RTX 3060ti. I'll be getting driver improvements for at least another year. I have a high refresh rate 1440p panel, and I don't see myself moving to 4k anytime soon.

If battlemage never releases to desktop, what have I actually lost? Nothing.

A few years down the road, it will be time to retire the card, and I'll see what I need, what is available, and how much it costs.

The risk in the meantime I are drivers. They failed epically with them at launch and took forever to fix them.
Who's to say they will provide driver updates on a regular basis optimizing for the latest games like Nvidia (not a fanboy, just the card I have).

Personally I wouldn't buy one for reasons here and previous posts. Little effort has been put in. And to top it off, if the partners don't see sales, they will just abandon Intel. While it may be a good fit/value card for some now, long term the risk is drivers.

I'm just not convinced enough effort was put into them to begin with and won't also moving forward.