by Intel’s low-end desktop graphics card has had its gaming performance leaked by a fairly reliable source: MSI. The company’s loose lips have lifted the lid on the AMD Zen 4 (opens in new tab) treats recently and has now turned its eyes to Intel’s upcoming China-first desktop graphics card series.
In a hastily removed ad for an upcoming gaming PC with Intel’s new GPUs, MSI notes the overall performance calculations for the Arc A380 card in a handful of esports-y titles, all with medium or low presets.
My machine translation of the four different games that were highlighted did not greatly help my understanding of which games the ad actually refers to, but the first report from the Hardware Times (opens in new tab) has certainly helped. Although I had to do a Google image search first. Regardless…
Budget Intel Alchemist GPU (opens in new tab)at 1080p, was shown with Naraka: Bladepoint checked in at over 85 fps, League of Legends at over 200 fps, PUBG at over 94 fps and Overwatch at over 100 fps.
It sounds a lot like the performance Intel suggested would be offered by portable versions of the Arc 3 graphics cards, which is not bad if there is a certain level of parity between them.
Especially since the A370M mobile GPU has been seen delivering performance around the RTX 3070 level. Although Intel Arc benchmarks (opens in new tab) has been a bit mixed, according to the leaked figures, which indicate that drivers may still need some work.
The MSI numbers look like performance taken from a standard version of the Arc A380 graphics card, but MSI lists two different systems: an entry-level M301 Dragon Shield with a Core i5 12400F CPU along with its standard Arc A380 GPU, and another with a Core i7 12700KF and an overclocked version of 6 GB graphics card.
We have already heard that Intel will focus on the launch of graphics cards first in China (opens in new tab), with the low parts. And then only in pre-built PCs. In a way that makes some sense; The internet cafe market is huge in China, and if it can get some penetration in that market from its partners, such as MSI, then it gives it a bit of a base to work from.
It will follow a global launch, probably again in pre-built systems, but then the DIY market should see individual GPUs shortly after that.
Intel’s long-awaited, long-delayed launch of graphics cards has been hit by supply chain issues as well as potential issues with getting the software up to standard. And that partly explains why they prioritize their partners over individual PC enthusiasts to make sure they can feed the OEM market with GPUs at launch. But that does not mean we like it.
For us, however, it will be the Arc 5 and 7 graphics cards that will mean more to PC gamers, as this 8 Xe device GPU is reportedly not going to be much to shout about in more demanding games.
