Intel Arc A770 graphics card to launch October 12 for $329

We've been waiting a long time for this. Intel has finally unveiled the release date and price of its upcoming Arc A770 graphics card: October 12 and $329.

Intel told us it would be competitive on price for its upcoming A770 and A750 graphics cards, and it looks to be for at least the A770. The A750 price is not known yet.

Since the A770 is reportedly going to face off against the RTX 3060 in performance—Intel says it will be a match or better in at least DX12 and Vulkan games—that price makes a lot of sense. It's actually the exact same MSRP as Nvidia's popular budget GPU, though Intel holds that no RTX 3060s are actually available for that price, instead noting a price around $418 for that card. 

Intel did previously tell me we'd see "a card that's faster than the [RTX] 3060 at prices that are lower." That's got to be the A750, then, as Intel did say that should compete with the RTX 3060 and perhaps beat it on some occasions. The A750 should be priced lower than the RTX 3060, too, but again we haven't heard confirmation on the price of that card. I sure hope Intel can keep that promise, anyways.

After a look around on a couple of retailers just now, I'm inclined to agree that Nvidia's card doesn't sell close to its MSRP (at least for a brand new model rather than open box). Though you can at least find them for a touch cheaper than mentioned, like this MSI model for $410.

But point made, Intel. If it can stick to that price and maintain a steady supply of cards (which it says it has plenty of, but will roll out gradually), it may well prove a decent card for gamers on a slimmer budget. 

It's going up against AMD at this price, however, and the RX 6600 launched for roughly the same price but is often found for less today. That Radeon card tends to slip behind the RTX 3060 in our testing, but it sounds like Intel's A770 performance will really depend on the API you choose.

In Vulkan and DX12, Intel appear confident of the A770's performance. But in DX11 and older APIs, not so much. At least with ray tracing games, Intel appears super confident of the A770's ability. Heck, it even states a 65% "peak performance" improvement versus "the competition" (assumedly the RTX 3060) in ray tracing.

Though who can say if Intel's third-party models will also hit that $329 price tag. Intel's only confirming here the A770 Limited Edition model MSRP, which is a model of card that it is producing under its own brand rather than relying on AIBs to do it. So far we don't know which partners Intel has scored for its upcoming first-generation Arc GPUs, but we know it has at least spoken to a few. ASRock has produced an A380 GPU, which was Intel's first, and very low-end, discrete GPU out of the gate, so perhaps ASRock will take it up on the A7 cards, too.

Admittedly, there are still a few unknowns regarding Arc—most of all performance outside of Intel's own labs. Thankfully, as Pat notes during Intel Innovation, Intel A770 cards are headed out to reviewers, including yours truly, so I'll have that info to share with you closer to that October 12 release date. Stay tuned.