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Intel has released its first Arc Alchemist graphics cards for laptops. The company will make two entry-level models available on Wednesday, March 30. Later on, higher positioned variants and desktop video cards will follow.
Intel’s Arc Alchemist series consists of three categories: Arc 3, Arc 5 and Arc 7, all of which are built on TSMC’s 6nm node. Arc 3 is the entry-level series, while the Arc 5 and Arc 7 series include higher-end models. The three categories differ in terms of number of cores, memory and power consumption.
Available immediately are the Intel Arc A350M and an Arc 370M, which are part of the Arc 3 series. The former has six Xe cores with six ray tracing cores and 4GB GDDR6 memory on a 64-bit memory bus. The video card is clocked at 1.15GHz. Intel claims a power consumption of 25 to 35W. The Arc 370M has two extra Arc cores and has a clock speed of 1.55GHz, which increases the power consumption to 35 to 50W.
An Arc A550M will follow at the beginning of this summer, with 16 Xe cores at 900MHz. That video card has 8GB GDDR6 memory. At the same time, Intel is introducing two Arc 7 graphics cards. The A730M has 24 cores and 12GB of memory, while the A770M has 32 cores and 16GB of memory. Intel previously said that desktop video cards will also appear in the second quarter, but the company is not yet sharing specifications.
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| Intel Arc video cards for laptops | |||||
| Serie | Arc 3 | Arc 5 | Arc 7 | ||
| Model | A350M | A370M | A550M | A730M | A770M |
| Xe-cores | 6 | 8 | 16 | 24 | 32 |
| Raytracingcores | 6 | 8 | 16 | 24 | 32 |
| Clock speed | 1150MHz | 1550MHz | 900MHz | 1100MHz | 1650MHz |
| Memory (GDDR6) | 4GB (64bit) | 4GB (64bit) | 8GB (128bit) | 12GB (192bit) | 16GB (256 bit) |
| ‘Graphics Power’ | 25-35W | 35-50W | 60-80W | 80-120W | 120-150W |
| Release | March 30, 2022 | Early summer 2022 | |||
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The company does show performance claims from its Arc 3 laptop video cards. In addition, the Arc 370M would achieve more than 60fps in games such as Hitman 3, Doom Eternal, F1 2021 and Destiny 2 at a full-HD resolution. In Fortnite, that same video card would achieve 94 fps at 1080p and with the settings on medium. With GTA V, the frame rate according to Intel is 105 fps.
Intel says several manufacturers are releasing laptops with an Arc 3 GPU. These include Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Intel, Lenovo, MSI, and Samsung, in addition to OEMs like Clevo. The company states that these laptops will be available “starting at” $899. Euro prices are not mentioned.
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Intel Xe cores and GPU build
Intel also shares information about the internal structure of its Arc Alchemist video cards. The GPUs have different numbers of render slices. Each render slice contains four Xe cores. Such a Xe core includes 16 vector engines, which were previously called execution units. Those engines can perform fp32, fp16 and int8 calculations. In addition, those cores each have 16 XMX matrix engines that are intended for AI calculations. Each Xe core also has a separate ‘unit’ for ray tracing and 192kB L1 cache.
The GPUs also get a media engine, which handles things like HDR tone mapping and video encoding and decoding. That media engine supports, among other things: hardware acceleration for AV1, in addition to HEVC, AVC and VP9. The video cards also have a separate display engine, which controls the image signal. The video cards thus support HDMI 2.0b and Displayport 1.4a, with Intel also saying that the Arc video cards are ‘DisplayPort 2.0 10G Ready’. HDMI 2.1 support is therefore missing. The Arc series also supports adaptive sync, DirectX 12 Ultimate and, among other things, ray tracing, variable rate shading, and mesh shading.
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Software: XeSS, Deep Link en Arc Control
Along with the Arc Alchemist video cards, Intel shares details about several software suites. The previously announced XeSS will arrive early this summer. That’s a temporal upscaler, just like Nvidia’s DLSS and AMD’s FSR 2.0. Frames are rendered at a lower resolution, and then scaled up. That should yield higher frame rates with less loss of quality.
XeSS works according to Intel cross platform, with which the upscaler should be available for certain video cards from AMD and Nvidia. However, there would be performance benefits with certain Intel video cards, as XeSS can use the XMX matrix engines. XeSS will be available for several PC games, including Death Stranding, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Ghostwire Tokyo, Grid Legends, Hitman III, and Chivalry II.
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Deep Link is also supported on the new video cards. This allows the integrated GPUs of Intel processors to work together with the Arc video card, which should provide better performance for certain computing tasks. Intel says this works when encoding video, for example. It is also possible via Deep Link power budget divided between the cpu and gpu, whereby the power consumption of the gpu can be reduced if it is used little, after which the cpu can be supplied with more power.
Intel also introduces its Arc Control software. That is a program for the GPU drivers, which also contains other functions. In that software, users can adjust the fan speeds and the power-Adjust settings. The software also offers performance overlays, in which they can track the clock speed and other GPU telemetry.
The software also offers integrated software for streaming to platforms such as Twitch, in addition to AI webcam functions, such as blurring or removing backgrounds. Also, users can retroactively record gameplay videos via Auto Game Highlights.
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