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Intel surprised PC gamers earlier this week with $329 pricing for its top Arc A770 GPU, matching Nvidia’s RTX 3060 retail pricing. While it’s still difficult to find an RTX 3060 at $329, Intel is now undercutting Nvidia’s popular GPU with a $289 starting price for its A750, a card it claims should be able to trade blows with the RTX 3060.
We’re still waiting on independent reviews of the Arc A750, but Intel did release 48 benchmarks last month showing that it should be able to beat or come close to Nvidia’s RTX 3060 performance in modern games. Intel tested its A750 directly against the RTX 3060 across 42 DirectX 12 titles and six Vulkan games, and the results look promising.
Intel is clearly aiming for performance per dollar and budget PC gamers with its Arc GPUs, which is particularly interesting if the company can actually ship its cards at their recommended retail prices. Nvidia’s RTX 3060 is supposed to start at $329, but it’s still rare to find one in stock at that price. Amazon has an MSI RTX 3060 listed for $399 right now and a Zotac RTX 3060 for around $379, but there’s nothing close to $329. It’s a similar story over at Newegg, where you’ll only find prices close to $329 on cards that are refurbished or open box.
Intel’s first A750 and A770 cards will start shipping on October 12th. Here’s what to expect:
It’s still not clear which card manufacturers beyond Intel itself will build these latest Arc GPUs, though. Intel lists a bunch of partners on its website, but most are OEMs. Only Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI actually make GPUs, but they also make laptops. Intel has its own Limited Edition Arc models, but the company isn’t announcing third-party board partners yet.
At $349 for a 16GB Arc A770 that can potentially outperform an RTX 3060, it’s possible Intel might run out of cards if they’re as limited as Nvidia’s Founders Edition models are. “We don’t know if we’re going to have a supply problem or a demand problem,” says Intel fellow Tom Petersen in a press briefing. “I hope we’re going to have a demand problem, in which case they’ll probably sell out pretty quickly.”
With pricing and release dates for Intel’s Arc GPUs finally here, all that’s left now is to see if Intel can truly match or beat Nvidia’s RTX 3060 at a cheaper price point. Stay tuned to The Verge for more on that soon.
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