Intel Arc Alchemist GPUs: Everything We Know So Far

Move over Nvidia and AMD, as Intel is incoming with their new Arc Alchemist GPU and we're super excited to see what they have in store for us.

The event has been and gone, and we've got more information than ever to sink our teeth into, including more information on the Intel Arc 3, Intel Arc 5 and Intel Arc 7 laptops and when we can get our hands on them.

Let's get into it.

Intel Arc Alchemist GPU Release Date

While there are some Intel Arc 3 laptops available for pre-order now, including this one from Samsung picture below, for those wanting the higher level Intel Arc 5 and Intel Arc 7 machines you'll have to wait until early Summer, according to the event.

What date in in particular is still yet to be revealed, but it looks like it will be worth the wait.

Intel Arc Alchemist GPU Specs & Features

The event itself did a good job of throwing every spec and feature known to man at us, and there's a lot to unpack, so let's take a look at the key takeaways here that make the Intel Arc discrete GPUs very interesting indeed.

Xe Super Sampling

One of the big focuses of the showcase was the Xe Super Sampling, which acts to intelligently upscale 1080p to XeSS 4K.

We saw this in action with games like Elden Ring and it is impressive. There is a marked difference in terms of detail, even when zoomed in, that we think will bring these games to life even on a laptop.

Perhaps the most exciting part of all this is that it's going to be available on some of the biggest games around, like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Death Stranding, and Hitman III.

AV1

Intel Arc is now the world's first GPU with a hardware-accelerated encoding for AV1. AV1 is a next-gen and royalty-free video codec that is being adopted by some of the largest video platforms out there.

What that means is that if you're a content creator, you're getting something that is geared towards making your life easier.

In this case you can get up to 50x faster hardware encoding for instance.

There's also XMX accelerated Creation, which can enhance lower quality video detail and colour. This will come in handy with old movies, but also with those capturing gameplay.

Intel Deep Link Technology

With Intel Deep Link technology, you can now get access to new levels of performance and efficiency by pairing select Intel core processors with intel arc graphics.

This opens up features like Dynamic Power Share, which intelligently routes power between the CPU and GPU for performance boosts, to features like Stream Assist, which allows you to play at higher framerates by offloading other tasks like capturing to secondary engines in your system.

Intel Arc Specs

The specs to the Intel Arc 3, 5, and 7 were seemingly leaked prior to the event, but let's recap here.

Intel Arc 3 A350M

• XE Cores: 6
• Ray tracing Units: 6
• Graphics Clock: 1150 MHZ
• Memory: 4GB GDDR6
• Memory Bus Width: 64-bit
• Graphics Power 25 - 35W

Intel Arc 3 A370M

• XE Cores: 8
• Ray tracing Units: 8

• Graphics Clock: 1550 MHZ
• Memory: 4GB GDDR6
• Memory Bus Width: 64-bit
• Graphics Power 35 -50W

Intel Arc 4 A550M

• XE Cores: 16
• Ray tracing Units: 16
• Graphics Clock: 900 MHZ
• Memory: 8GB GDDR6
• Memory Bus Width: 128-bit
• Graphics Power 60-80W

Intel Arc 7 A740M

• XE Cores: 24
• Ray tracing Units: 24
• Graphics Clock: 1100 MHZ
• Memory: 12GB GDDR6
• Memory Bus Width: 192-bit
• Graphics Power 80-120W

Intel Arc 7 A770M

• XE Cores: 32
• Ray tracing Units: 32
• Graphics Clock: 1650 MHZ
• Memory: 16GB GDDR6
• Memory Bus Width: 256-bit
• Graphics Power 120-150W

Intel Arc Prices

The prices of the laptops these discrete GPUs will go into are going to vary obviously, but we do have an idea of where the starting point is for one.

The Intel Arc 3 laptops are listed as starting at $899, with the Intel Arc 5 and 7 still yet to be announced.

We're predicting they'll fall in the $1200 - $1800 region, if we had to square them up against some of the other heavy-lifting gaming laptops on the market today.

You can pre-order the first of the Intel Arc 3 laptops now from Samsung, but it may be worth holding out until Summer if you're looking for something a little beefier.

Either way, there's a lot to look forward to, and it looks like Intel may have just raised the game.

Read More:RDNA 3 - Everything you need to know