Intel Arc Alchemist GPUs could be pricier than we’d hoped

Intel Spark Alchemist GPUs could be pricier than we'd hoped

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Intel's shrill-end play nontextual matter cards which are rigid to go on sale in the first quarter of 2022 will bring some much-needed competition to the GPU world-wide, but exactly how competitive will they be? Fortunate, we just heard something interesting from the rumor factory regarding the potential pricing of Team Blue's incoming video cards.

As Tom's Hardware spotted, Intel has an Xe Electric arc Alchemist GPU giveaway on the boil in which gamers can win various prizes, and the total value of those prizes is listed by Intel. Using a bit of naif maths, it's possible to go out ballpark figures in US dollars for the possible asking prices of the Atomic number 54-HPG cards.

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The grand prize amounts to a value of $900, with the succeeder getting a 'premium' Intel Arch artwork tease (flagship), and the first-place prize is $700 approximately, and comes with a 'functioning' Intel Arc GPU. (There'll personify 100 and 200 winners of each respectively).

The prizes also arrive with six months of Xbox Back Pass for PC in the case of the top winners, and three months for first-place winners, plus more or less Intel Spark branded merchandise (to an unspecified value).

So, with the agio flagship GPU, if we knock off $60 for the Xbox Game Pass subscription, that leaves $840, subtraction what the Intel merchandise might be worth – perhaps $50, or $100? Big us an estimated price of more or less $740 to $790 for the card.

Similarly, for the performance Arc graphics card, we start with $700, cop $30 for the three months of Xbox Game Pass, and then that drops to almost $570 to $620 after the merchandise has been accounted for.

So the rough pricing indicant is approaching $800 for the flagship, perhaps, and around $600 for the operation GPU (about £580, Gold$1,070, and about £440, AU$800 respectively, but naturally currency conversions in this case are pretty hollow).

Theoretically, the flagship will be the antecedently rumored graphics batting order with 512 EUs (Execution Units), and the performance model might be the i under that, supposedly with 384 EUs, going by previous meditation (though Intel is set to switch to a incompatible naming outline with Arc card game, abandoning EUs pro Xe Cores).

Analysis: Bob Hope fades for competing pricing from Intel?

This feels a picayune disappointing, as we were hoping Intel might attack along the pricing front with its high-carrying into action gaming GPUs.

If these rough figures turn resolute be accurate, then given that the flagship Xe-HPG graphics card is rumored to equate to the Nvidia RTX 3070 or thereabouts – get into't be shy with the salt shaker here, of path – it's non a relative bargain in comparison. In the least – in fact, this seems to evoke that Intel's top Canis familiaris GPU wish be more expensive, and indeed information technology'd be competing more with the RTX 3080 here.

That aforesaid, we're talking recommended pricing, and real-world pricing is very different with the GPU parentage shortages which carry on to plague gamers, and aren't expected to soften for a good while yet.

The reality is that suggested prices volition be majorly inflated while this position continues, Eastern Samoa indeed Intel expects IT will throughout the entirety of next year, perhaps. In all likelihood, supply pressures volition still be much exerting their unwanted influence on the art carte market at the start of 2022 when Intel launches Arc Alchemist GPUs.

Competitive pricing and coming in with the intention of undercutting Nvidia and AMD, then, As a successful way of breaking into the two-horse speed of the art card market may not be a realistic proposition on this groundwork. Intel simply South Korean won't need to look at lowering pricing to sell these products – they'll fly off the shelves anyway, even with the guesstimated pricing talked about here – particularly if Squad Blue isn't producing a huge number of GPUs receivable to supply issues after set in motion…

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Darren is a freelancer composition news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a all-embracing range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various past computer hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the go-to-meeting part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his first appearance novel - 'I Know What You Did Lord's Supper' - was published past Hachette UK in 2013).