Editor's Note: Intel's first Arc laptop GPUs are available now: Here's what you need to know, and what you can expect from the even beefier models shipping Summer 2022.
Intel plans to produce "millions" of its upcoming Arc GPUs in response to the tricky supply situation in the graphics card market.
In response to an article from our sibling publication PC Gamer Raja Koduri tweeted that Intel is working hard to "find a path" to produce masses of its first dedicated graphics cards.
This is promising for PC gamers. While we have no definitive information on the performance of Intel's Arc GPUs, notably the Alchemist gaming-centric graphics card, Intel pushing into the dedicated GPU market could really offer an alterative to the cards offered by Nvidia and AMD.
Currently, it's very difficult to find the latest graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD in stock almost anywhere. Take a look at our where to buy the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 guide, and you can get a taste for how rarer now graphics cards are. This is all thanks to a ongoing chip shortage and sky-high demand.
I am with you, @pcgamer. This is a huge issue for PC gamers and the industry at large. @IntelGraphics is working hard to find a path towards the mission - getting millions of Arc GPUs into the hands of PC gamers every year https://t.co/bknQOvUMtiJanuary 29, 2022
But Intel has its own chip foundries and should theoretically be in a better position to produce more of its own GPUs than Nvidia or AMD. As such, if the Arc GPUs can at least be relatively competitive with cards from Team Green and Team Red, then we could see a third player in the GPUs arena help alleviate some of the problems around graphics card supplies.
However, all this is somewhat academic as we still don't know about when the first Alchemist GPUs will arrive on the market. We have a vague idea of the cards launching in the first half this year according to Intel, but there's no concrete official timeline from Intel.
Hopefully, when the cards do arrive we'll be impressed by their performance. Just like the leading GeForce and Radeon cards available right now, the Intel Alchemist card will support ray tracing, AI supersampling, and DirectX 12 Ultimate. Plus there's evidence it's got a decent amount of power, posting benchmark results comparable to the RTX 3070 Ti. While 2021 was an exhausting year for users trying to upgrade their PC GPUs, perhaps the next few quarters of 2022 will bring some much-needed relief.
