Intel’s Arc GPUs Arrive With Little Uptake From Third-Party Vendors

Intel’s Arc graphics cards are officially here, but with little support from third-party GPU vendors. 

Case in point: You’ll only find a few Arc models on sale compared to the plethora of products that rivals Nvidia and AMD have been selling through retailers. For example, Wednesday’s launch of Nvidia’s RTX 4090 in the US received support from at least six GPU vendors, including Gigabyte, MSI, and Asus.

Intel, on the other hand, launched the $329 Arc A770 and $289 A750 graphics cards on the same day. But aside from the company’s own manufactured models, ASRock was the only third-party vendor to officially offer Arc GPUs for sale in the US. 

The only Arc GPU available on Newegg is the Arc A380, which the retailer quietly began selling in August.
(Credit: Newegg)

It doesn’t help that both Intel and ASRock quickly ran out of supplies on Newegg, the sole e-commerce dealer for Arc graphics cards in the US. Intel has also been selling the Arc GPUs at Micro Center, but only at physical stores in six US cities.  

The lack of uptake from third-party GPU vendors adds to the struggles facing Intel’s Arc line, which has faced several delays. The graphics cards were originally supposed to arrive last year. But Intel later pushed back the Arc desktop graphics card to Q2, then to Q3, and then eventually to early Q4 for the US market with Wednesday’s launch. 

For now, Intel tells PCMag its partners on the Arc graphics cards include Acer, ASRock, Gunnir, PC provider iBuyPower, along with China system integrators JTHS, MayN, MLOONG, and Pason. However, these partners are working on both add-in desktop cards and Arc GPUs meant to be sold in prebuilt desktop rigs.  

Predator Arc GPU from Acer
(Credit: coolpc.com.tw)

Gunnir is also a vendor that seems focused on the Chinese market. Meanwhile, Acer has debuted(Opens in a new window) a Predator Bifrost Arc A770 model. But it doesn’t appear to be on sale yet, although one merchant has listed a unit on Newegg(Opens in a new window) at the inflated price of $720. (The listed unit is also shipping directly from China with a wait time ranging from seven to 32 days.) 

So for now, it looks like Intel’s first-generation Arc graphics cards will arrive at a small scale relative to the competition. But in some good news, Intel says its own company-manufactured Arc graphics cards will remain in production for some time, despite being named “Limited Edition” GPUs. Hence, consumers who missed out the initial sales can expect more units to arrive over time. 

Arc A770

Jon Peddie, a graphics card market analyst, says(Opens in a new window) the main problem facing Intel’s gaming GPU venture has been the company’s marketing team struggling to stay on the same page as the engineering team, which has been busy ensuring the graphics card both work and can be scaled into mass production.

“Those two groups appear to have different agendas and time schedules and don’t seem to know each other’s phone number,” he tells PCMag. However, he expects Intel will become a formidable competitor capable of attracting third-party vendors once it establishes itself in the discrete GPU market. 

“As for partners, Intel won’t have any problem getting them,” he adds. “If marketing hadn’t jumped the gun and Intel could have visited the OEMs and AIB (Add-in-board) suppliers with a finished design that could be mass produced, you would have seen a wall of logos. That will come, so don’t read anything in between the lines. It takes time for an OEM or AIB partner to get their marketing campaign up and running and as those partners get to launch point, Intel will announce them.”