ASRock opens up to Intel, it is no longer AMD's exclusive partner in the GPU sector

ASRock opens up to Intel, it is no longer AMD’s exclusive partner in the GPU sector

Looking forward to news from Intel on the arrival of Arc video cards in Europe and more precisely in Italy, here are the first photos of one Arc A380 made by ASRock. The Taiwanese company, active in the GPU sector since 2018 exclusively as a partner of AMD, has therefore decided to sign another partnership and embrace Intel’s fledgling offering with a small custom solution called ASRock Arc A380 Challenger.

Intel, after years of development, introduced the first GPUs such as the Arc A380 only in China, via a single partner called GUNNIR who built the GUNNIR Arc A380 Photon. The model, a low-end solution that enters a collision course with the Radeon RX 6400, in the various reviews published in Asia and the USA has highlighted several problems in terms of drivers and a generally higher consumption than its counterparts.

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The card is equipped with an Alchemist GPU, more precisely known as ACM-G11, equipped with 8 Xe-cores and as many ray tracing units. Next to the graphics chip we find 6 GB GDDR6 at 15.5 Gbps on a 96-bit bus. The interface is PCIe 4.0 x8, while the TBP hovers between 75 and 87 watts depending on the clock frequency. In the case of the GUNNIR and ASRock proposals there is an 8-pin PCIe connector that confirms the overclocking with respect to the reference specifications.

“We will release our entry-level Intel Arc A-series desktop (A3) products first in China via system builders and OEMs in Q2. Retail component sales in China will follow shortly,” Intel explained a few weeks ago. “The proximity to component manufacturers and the strong demand for dedicated entry-level products make China a natural starting point. Our next step will be to take these products globally.”

“The rollout of the Intel Arc A5 and A7 cards will begin worldwide with OEMs and system integrators by the end of the summer, followed by worldwide channel component sales. This staggered approach gives us confidence that we can effectively serve the our customer base at every stage. “

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While waiting to be able to put our hands on the Intel GPUs, in recent weeks we have seen the Arc A750 compared to the GeForce RTX 3060 in some tests published by the same company and a taste, although not very exciting, of the performance of the top of the range Arc A770. Based on what we’ve seen so far, Intel still has a long way to go to compete on equal terms with AMD and NVIDIA.