News Intel Employee Crows About Acquiring a Retail Arc A380 GPU

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Titan
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Considering how curious people were to find out how good/bad the A380 was going to be, I'm surprised so many major sites haven't managed to get one of these air-dropped to their reviewers yet.

Intel's driver people must be paddling like mad trying to get drivers sorted out before the usual suspects inevitably get their hands on the hardware.
 
D

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I'm surprised by the fact no review from China has been linked so far. That's even more concerning. I hope Intel cards are good value for money. Otherwise it's not going to live for long.
 

InvalidError

Titan
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I hope Intel cards are good value for money. Otherwise it's not going to live for long.
From the A380 numbers that have come out so far, it is barely keeping up with the RX6400. On the plus side, you do get 2GB extra VRAM and a full set of encode/decode capabilities which should make it the better deal as long as Intel's drivers get up to par soon enough.

There is still lots of room in the currently overpriced market for Intel to launch something, it just need to be priced with performance and maturity. Intel's pricing should take a substantial hit from the maturity front.
 

Soaptrail

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From the A380 numbers that have come out so far, it is barely keeping up with the RX6400. On the plus side, you do get 2GB extra VRAM and a full set of encode/decode capabilities which should make it the better deal as long as Intel's drivers get up to par soon enough.

There is still lots of room in the currently overpriced market for Intel to launch something, it just need to be priced with performance and maturity. Intel's pricing should take a substantial hit from the maturity front.

There is not a lot of room left for that PC with how huge that GPU is! Is that the same size as an Nvidia 3080?
 

Eximo

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I'm surprised by the fact no review from China has been linked so far. That's even more concerning. I hope Intel cards are good value for money. Otherwise it's not going to live for long.

The early reviews that came out were heavily focused on a few popular asian game titles. And then some reviews did come out with more global titles, but all in Chinese.

https://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/2022-06-22_11-40-56.png

League of Legends, GTA 5, PUBG, Shadow of The Tomb Raider, Forza Horizon 5, and Red Dead Redemption 2
 
...as well as being capable of "some impressive mainstream gaming to compete with the AMD and Nvidia offerings at the same price point.
So... the 1630? >_>

I'm surprised by the fact no review from China has been linked so far. That's even more concerning. I hope Intel cards are good value for money. Otherwise it's not going to live for long.
Considering it apparently took three weeks for Intel's head of graphics marketing to get their hands on a production model, I think it's still more of a paper launch at this point. In any case, even Intel has posted performance numbers suggesting this card will be slower than an RX 6400 or a GTX 1650 (a card that launched at a $150 MSRP over 3 years ago), so I wouldn't expect much from it. Maybe if it's priced under $120 it might be worth considering for a low-end gaming system though. Then again, Nvidia seems to think they can sell the even slower 1630 for more than that, despite the crypto market having collapsed.

At the very least, this model isn't going to be a competitive "mid-range" card. There's potential for other cards in the lineup like the as-yet-unreleased A780 to fare better though. With four times the cores and slightly higher clocks, it might manage to offer performance competitive with something like a 3060 Ti. Then it just comes down to price, and how much worse the drivers and feature-set will be compared to the competition.

On the bottom center of box it says "Into the Unknow".

Is the typo intentional or is there something I'm not getting?
It's a Chinese card targeted at the Chinese market, so most likely they just threw a bit of broken English on the box to look nice. It could be worse...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LotteriaMyanmar.jpg
 

gruffi

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Sry Intel. But first gen Arc is DOA. Delays over delays, underwhelming performance, still the usual Intel driver issues. No need to care about it anymore. Try to do better with your next gen. With the GTX 1630 you have at least a worthy contender for the worst graphics card of the year. ^^
 

Loadedaxe

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I dont know what he is "crowing" about.
Ryan Shrout is trying to what? Peddle a useless graphics card?

I will be glad Intel is in the gpu arena when they release a card you can actually buy and has competitive performance. For 3 years we have been hearing this kind of non sense about Intel GPUs.

Intel, put up or shut up. Releasing a card no one can review or even get for that matter, is.....

Ryan Shrout
 

3ogdy

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"Into the unknow"

Because we're Chinese and we use English on the product box just to make it look cool. It doesn't matter whether it's actually correct or not.

LMFAO.
 

Co BIY

Splendid
Because we're Chinese and we use English on the product box just to make it look cool. It doesn't matter whether it's actually correct or not.

LMFAO.

Here people get Chinese characters permanently tattooed on their bodies without a care for what they really mean - Also because they "look cool" and would indicate that you are well traveled and sophisticated (if you knew what it meant and could read it).
 
Sry Intel. But first gen Arc is DOA. Delays over delays, underwhelming performance, still the usual Intel driver issues. No need to care about it anymore. Try to do better with your next gen. With the GTX 1630 you have at least a worthy contender for the worst graphics card of the year. ^^
Well, this is only the entry-level model, and we don't know exactly where pricing will land just yet. And it's very possible that cards like the A580 and A780 could potentially offer really good value when they launch, again, depending on what performance and pricing will be like.

Current cards from the competition offer pretty poor value right now, so it might not be hard for Intel to do better. The 3060 Ti was supposed to be a $400 card, but currently you still can't find them new for under $500, despite the fall of the mining market and retailers now sitting on piles of cards. The same goes for the 3050, which was supposed to be a $250 card. These cards are still priced upward of 25-30% over MSRP, which really hurts their value, and if Intel releases something at or below their MSRPs with competitive performance, they could potentially have an attractive lineup, assuming they get those cards out before prices work their way back down. While Nvidia and AMD might still hold the enthusiast-end of the market, most gamers are not looking for $500+ graphics cards.
 

InvalidError

Titan
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Well, this is only the entry-level model, and we don't know exactly where pricing will land just yet. And it's very possible that cards like the A580 and A780 could potentially offer really good value when they launch, again, depending on what performance and pricing will be like.
While we may not know where the final prices will land when the things actually launch, we do have a pretty good idea of what Intel wanted the prices to be from its scavenger hunt event prizes valuation and the estimations from that were bonkers crazy high to blend in with the AMD and Nvidia crowd during a scalper orgy. The top prize was $900 and if you value the total non-GPU part of the prize to $200, that leaves $700 for the top-end ARC. Now that prices have crashed along with crypto, A380 has proven ARC's performance to be sub-par in most real-world loads at least with current drivers and drivers have also proven to be sub-par, I'd expect Intel to have a hard time getting $400 for those.
 

gruffi

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Well, this is only the entry-level model, and we don't know exactly where pricing will land just yet. And it's very possible that cards like the A580 and A780 could potentially offer really good value when they launch, again, depending on what performance and pricing will be like.
Even different silicon will not solve their biggest problems, driver issues. And if 380 is not good enough against almost two year old competition how will 580/780 change that? Leave alone the soon to be launched new gens from AMD and Nvidia.

Current cards from the competition offer pretty poor value right now
Graphics card prices are actually a lot better now. I could grab a new RX 6600 for just 150 EUR. Which is pretty amazing value. You think Intel will offer much lower prices than AMD or Nvidia? Not gonna happen. They have to pay TSMC for it. It will not be manufactured for free. The only chance I see Intel lowering prices significantly is another chapter of their contra revenue practices. Which again is no good sign for Arc.

if Intel releases something at or below their MSRPs with competitive performance, they could potentially have an attractive lineup
That's the problem. I only know Chinese prices of Arc so far. Intel priced 380 at 1030 Yuan. Which is ~150 EUR. You can get RX 6400 for ~160 EUR at the moment. Which easily beats 380 at only 53W TGP vs 75W TGP. As first independent reviews show RX 6400 is ~10-20% faster at gaming. Doesn't look very attractive to me what Intel is offering. Their claim of "25% better performance per yuan" is completely delusional. That might be the case in some synthetic garbage no one really should care about.
 
While we may not know where the final prices will land when the things actually launch, we do have a pretty good idea of what Intel wanted the prices to be from its scavenger hunt event prizes valuation and the estimations from that were bonkers crazy high to blend in with the AMD and Nvidia crowd during a scalper orgy. The top prize was $900 and if you value the total non-GPU part of the prize to $200, that leaves $700 for the top-end ARC. Now that prices have crashed along with crypto, A380 has proven ARC's performance to be sub-par in most real-world loads at least with current drivers and drivers have also proven to be sub-par, I'd expect Intel to have a hard time getting $400 for those.
As I pointed out in the comments of the article here about that supposed "price leak", the prize valuation was rather vague, since it included other items that were only described as "Intel Arc branded merchandise". Is that a sticker? A t-shirt? A bicycle? And of course, the value of the hardware at the peak of the mining craze might vary substantially from its value in a more normal market. 3060 Ti's could be "valued" at over $800 at the time, so Intel valuing their card accordingly might not be unreasonable, even if they didn't actually expect to price them at that level by the time they actually launched. It would be kind of hard for them to provide a meaningful ARV for a product that wasn't expected to launch for at least half a year in such a volatile market.

Even different silicon will not solve their biggest problems, driver issues. And if 380 is not good enough against almost two year old competition how will 580/780 change that? Leave alone the soon to be launched new gens from AMD and Nvidia.
The new-generation cards around the expected price range for the cards in this lineup are not expected to launch until next year. Nvidia might potentially launch a new enthusiast-level card in few months or so, but it might be over 6 months before we get anything new around the $400 range, let alone at lower price points. AMD just launched the RX 6400 and RX 6500XT 6 months ago, and Nvidia launched the 3050 around the same time, so I can't see them replacing those for a while still.

Graphics card prices are actually a lot better now. I could grab a new RX 6600 for just 150 EUR. Which is pretty amazing value. You think Intel will offer much lower prices than AMD or Nvidia? Not gonna happen. They have to pay TSMC for it. It will not be manufactured for free. The only chance I see Intel lowering prices significantly is another chapter of their contra revenue practices. Which again is no good sign for Arc.
Prices might be "better" than they were a few months ago, but still not "good" by any means. And a new RX 6600 for 150 Euros sounds suspicious. Especially since you suggest the RX 6400 is around 160. >_>

As for "paying TSMC", that's just for the graphics chip, which amounts to only a portion of a card's retail price. Probably not more than $30 or so for the chip in the A380. Add in the cost of VRAM and the rest of the board's components and cooling, and the cards likely cost under $100 to make. Of course retailers and card manufacturers need a cut of the profits, limiting how low pricing can go, but Intel may choose to forgo their share just to help them establish a presence in the market with these early generations of cards.

And the largest card, the A780, might not cost much more than a couple hundred dollars or so to manufacture. So if the card manages to compete well with something like a 3060 Ti, they would likely have a lot of flexibility to price it competitively. Of course, Nvidia could also adjust the pricing on their cards to compete as well, since big profits are being made on those at the moment.

That's the problem. I only know Chinese prices of Arc so far. Intel priced 380 at 1030 Yuan. Which is ~150 EUR. You can get RX 6400 for ~160 EUR at the moment.
Or, as the article points out, the Chinese pricing of this particular model was supposedly equivalent to "approximately $130-$140". And of course, that may not match pricing in the rest of the world, particularly if the cards launch later. Typically though, Intel tends to offer competitive pricing when they enter new hardware markets. And again, even if pricing of their lowest-end model doesn't impress, that won't necessarily apply to the other models. There's a lot more room for making prices competitive while still turning a profit the higher up the product stack you go.
 

gruffi

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Prices might be "better" than they were a few months ago, but still not "good" by any means.
Sure. But that applies to Arc as well. Some years ago a card like 380 should have been released for less than $100 to be competitive.

And a new RX 6600 for 150 Euros sounds suspicious. Especially since you suggest the RX 6400 is around 160. >_>
It really isn't suspicious. I work in that business. So, I can get some nice discounts on certain products. ;)

As for "paying TSMC", that's just for the graphics chip, which amounts to only a portion of a card's retail price.
Sure. But the chip is still part of the card. And the lower you price the card the lower your margins of the chip will usually be. At some point you drift into the "contra revenue area". Don't forget, the chip of the 380 isn't that cheap at all. It's manufactured in the same TSMC N6 process as 6400/6500 XT, but is almost 50% larger. That's why it's delusional if people think Intel will significantly undercut AMD's or Nvidia's prices. Especially AMD has a lot more flexibility at pricing than the competition. Reviews often mocked about the 6500 XT when it was launched. Which in my opinion wasn't really justified. Just because it doesn't have 8 GB VRAM like mainstream cards, or misses some encoding hardware you wouldn't use on such a card anyway, doesn't make it a bad card. It's still an entry-level card. Considering designs on a quite modern manufacturing process, Navi 24 actually is an amazing chip in terms of performance per cost. 6500 XT often was compared to 8 GB RTX 3050 by reviewers. I could only do this then🤦‍♂. Sure, RTX 3050 is clearly faster. But it also uses a chip that is >2.5x as large as Navi 24. Which also makes it a lot more expensive. Everyone with a clue could see that RTX 3050 is more like a low mainstream card and not entry-level. And that's why it's no direct competition to 6500 XT. OTOH Arc 380 is direct competition to cards like 6400 / 6500 XT. But loses at performance and cost. Which is a really bad combination. In fact I didn't expect more from Arc. But I also don't see any reason to hope for more with that generation. Intel can only hope to have a better successor.
 

InvalidError

Titan
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Don't forget, the chip of the 380 isn't that cheap at all. It's manufactured in the same TSMC N6 process as 6400/6500 XT, but is almost 50% larger.
Navi 24 was quoted at $18 if I remember correctly. Add 50% and round that up, that's $30, still not that large next to the ~$50 for 6GB of GDDR6.

People are pissing on the RX6500 because 4GB is getting extremely borderline for entry-level gaming and outrageous when you get to $200. The GPU costs ~$100 to manufacture, which means the $200 MSRP is 100% gross profit margin to split between AMD and its middlemen. There was a time where AMD was happy to get away with ~35%. The RX6500's pricing for how cut-down it is an insult to intelligence and testament to how screwed up the entry-level GPU market has become. Going 6GB on a 96bits bus with all of the missing bits added back in would increase the GPU's manufacturing cost by about $10 and made the $200 price tag far more palatable.

If companies are going to shaft you with sandpaper and all you say is "harder please!" they are going to try a demolition saw next.