But one area where it hasn’t ventured into much is discrete graphics cards. For laptops and desktops, this segment of the market has typically been dominated by NVIDIA and AMD. But now Intel is ready to step into the ring. And the ARC A-Series will be what it uses to attack the market. The company is only focusing on laptops for now though. With today’s launch of the ARC A-Series powering laptops and laptops alone. Additionally, Intel isn’t launching its entire mobile lineup. For example, the ARC 3 GPUs will be the first to hit the shelves. With the ARC 5 and ARC 7 GPUs coming later this year.
The first Intel ARC GPUs won’t be the most powerful for gaming
As Intel starts to unleash its first discrete GPUs in quite a while, the company isn’t putting its most powerful hardware out on the market just yet. While the ARC 3 GPUs will be adequate (even more so than its Iris Xe integrated graphics) for things like gaming, its more powerful ARC 5 and ARC 7 GPUs aren’t hitting until later this year. Specifically later this Summer. Intel says the ARC 3 series GPUs will still offer “enhanced 1080p gaming and advanced content creation,” though. GPUs like the ARC 3 A370M will come with six Xe cores and six ray tracing units. Both the A350M and A370M also come with 4GB of GDDR6 RAM. With 25W-35W and 35W-50W of graphics power respectively. Compared to the ARC 7 series which offers 12GB of RAM and 80-120W of graphics power in the A730M and 16GB of RAM and 120W-150W of graphics power in the A770M, the ARC 3 series is quite obviously not aimed at being the most powerful gaming hardware out there. Even with the ARC 5 and ARC 7, Intel isn’t trying to compete in the ultra performance segment of gaming graphics. Rather, it’s more focused on “delivering a good experience.” That’s according to Intel VP and GM of Client Graphics Products Solutions Roger Chandler. Who spoke to The Verge about the company’s discrete graphics plans.
Intel is also providing tools to manage graphics upkeep
In addition to launching the new GPUs, Intel is also launching new software tools to manage graphics upkeep. A new tool called ARC Control is an app that will let users do things like update graphics drivers and adjust the performance of monitors. It will also let users access in-game overlays to see how the GPUs are performing in real-time. Intel says it will start offering the ARC 3 GPUs in the Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro, with machines from more partners on the way including Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP and more.
