Expectations for Intel's upcoming Arc A750 Limited Edition GPU are being muted. The chipmaker gives us the tiniest of views at the card's fairly mediocre on-paper performance in a new film that is only three minutes long.
It's vital to keep in mind that the A750 is one of Intel's top-of-the-line GPUs, as indicated by the "7" at the front of its name, before we continue. The Arc 5 and Arc 3, which are designed to offer midrange and entry-level performance, respectively, are positioned below the Arc 7 according to Intel's naming rules.
In the video, Ryan Shrout from Intel starts up Cyberpunk 2077 on a computer with the A750 chip installed, but instead of spending much time on gameplay, he jumps right to performance.
Shrout claims that the card averages "just under" 60 frames per second (FPS) with the game set to the "high-quality" preset and 2560 x 1440 resolution. While this isn't horrible, it's not exactly what you'd expect from a firm like Intel's entry into the discrete graphics card market.
Next, Shrout displays benchmark results, demonstrating how the card compares against the base-level Nividia GeForce RTX 3060. On games like Cyberpunk 2077, F1 2021, Control, Borderlands 3, and Fortnite, the Intel Arc A750 performs 1.06 to 1.15 times better than the typical RTX 3060.
The performance of Arc won't always appear this well in games, but Shrout cautions that these benchmark tests still provide "a terrific glimpse of what Arc is capable of with the correct game enablement and software engineering." (Not to mention the fact that these tests weren't carried out by a third party.)
Obviously, we can't truly judge a card's performance until we put it to the test, but this initial impression provided by Intel isn't that impressive. The entry-level Arc A380 desktop GPU and the A370M and A350M mobile GPUs from Intel have already been made available in a number of different notebooks in China. The Arc A750 GPU is scheduled to debut later this summer (which is supposed to hit the global market later this year).
For Intel's new series of GPUs, things aren't looking so good right now. According to a review by Linus Tech Tips, the 16-inch HP Spectre x360 laptop's addition of Intel's A370M actually rendered it "worse" than the RTX 3050 variant, and PC gaming YouTube channel Gamer Nexus noted inconsistent performance with the A380.
Any new product will inevitably have bugs and other issues, and as Linus notes in his video, people might be less likely to purchase something that needs venturing into uncharted waters, especially now when GPUs are so widely accessible and Nvidia's 40-series cards are just around the corner.
An M2 processor-equipped MacBook Air was unveiled by Apple. The new 1080p camera has been concealed in a notch, making the display larger at 13.6 inches and closer to the edge of the lid. It has a headphone jack, two thunderbolt ports, and a MagSafe charging port. Beginning in July 2022, the M2 MacBook Air will be priced at $1,199.