Intel Arc Alchemist technically arrived back in March, but we’ve yet to see desktop or gaming laptops packing the GPUs released outside of China. While it might feel like the blue team has forgotten about the rest of the world, a member of the company’s marketing team has created an unboxing video after getting hold of a retail card.
Over on Twitter, community engagement director Ryan Shrout shows off two Intel Arc GPUs, both of which are custom Gunnir A380 Photon models. Equipped with 8 Xe-Cores, Shrout reiterates that the cards in question cater to 1080p gaming at medium settings. Of course, if you’ve been keeping up with early Arc Alchemist benchmarks, you’ll already know the A380 struggles to keep up with the likes of the Nvidia GTX 1650.
The Intel Arc A380 is undeniably a budget graphics card, with a price tag that works out at around $140 USD. Despite its cheap status, Shrout says the GPU features “exceptional build quality,” but we’ll have to get our hands on one before knowing if this rings true.
Got my hands on the retail version of the Gunnir Intel Arc A380 Photon 6G OC card. It’s only available in China right now so WW buyers might not see it locally, but the build quality is exceptional. Mainstream 1080pMed gaming, DX12 Ultimate, AV1 HW encode, solid value! #IAmIntel pic.twitter.com/88tgxducI9
— Ryan Shrout (@ryanshrout) July 5, 2022
Intel’s Arc Alchemist graphics cards were supposed to compete against current-gen contenders. However, the lineup’s staggered arrival means it’s playing catch up with both AMD and Nvidia. Next-gen RTX 4000 and Radeon RDNA 3 GPUs are expected to arrive in a few months’ time, and if the A380 is anything to go by, Intel will struggle to trade blows.