Date: Intel introduces Arc graphics cards for laptops on March 30

As Intel announced, the first dedicated Arc family GPUs for laptops will be unveiled on March 30. One day before the deadline. a Lisa Pearce blog post, responsible for the GPU business at Intel, gives some first details. As a result, only the Arc A370M mobile will be available at first.

On the penultimate day of the 1st trimester

The first quarter is drawing to a close, but since Arc graphics cards were originally supposed to launch in late 2021, Intel will achieve its most recently formulated goal of introducing the first Arc GPUs for laptops by the end of March, albeit very strictly. : on the penultimate day of the first trimester begins the bow event at 16:00 local time. Intel invites interested parties to “take a first look at our new discrete graphics for laptops“.

However, don’t expect any big surprises about the Arc lineup for notebooks, because leaked key data has become more and more concrete and the first benchmarks for the Intel Arc A380 have also been published by a not-so-official site. However, the smaller Intel Arc A370M model with 128 expected EUs will make the start, as Pearce reveals in the blog.

Intel Arc A370M is said to offer twice the iGPU performance

For this graphics card, which Acer had already announced at CES 2022 in the new Swift X 14/16, Pearce promises twice the performance of the Xe iGPU with 96 EUs in the Intel Core i7-12700H in notebooks of the same form factor. The basis is a game: Metro Exodus (DX12) in Full HD with medium preset.

ComputerBase already had the Core i7-12700H iGPU in the gaming test. The following diagram shows the performance of this iGPU in six games (medium FHD) in relation to other mobile graphics cards, including the new Ryzen 6000 Radeon 680M iGPU. Intel Arc A370M would also offer twice the gaming performance on average than the iGPU of the Core i7 -12700H (colored blue in the diagram), the dedicated graphics card would be placed just ahead of the Radeon 680M. But Intel should have mentioned one of the best results with Metro Exodus.

On March 30, Intel wants to show more information about the expected performance, with Intel promising the following format: a table that lists how many games in Full HD with medium preset with more than 90, more than 60, more than 45 FPS, etc. pp are executed.

This type of presentation and the fact that Intel promises to speak again in the course of the year to continuously optimize the driver should indicate that the company has not yet resolved the software problems that are prevalent with current Xe iGPUs.

In general, software tuning is critical to delivering maximum performance on GPUs, but it will take some time for us to mature our GPU stack for all applications. So, to speed up today’s performance, we’ve developed application optimization techniques (such as shader tuning) that ensure that core applications deliver a great experience, while our compiler matures in parallel. These optimizations are already in place for the top 50 apps, and we’re rapidly expanding our coverage to the top 100.

Intel XeSS, its own alternative to Nvidia DLSS or AMD FSR, will also be unveiled on March 30. It remains to be seen if the group will also give details about the desktop ramifications that will appear in the second quarter.