Intel and the huge confusion over the actual availability of the first mobile Arc GPUs

Last week Intel announced the first GPU Arcstarting from mobile solutions Arc 3more precisely the models Arc A350M e A370M. The higher-end Arc 5 and Arc 7 proposals will arrive only at the beginning of the summer.

The message about real availability of the first Arc 3 GPUs it must not have passed correctly, as news is circulating on the net about a postponement at the end of the quarter which, in reality, is not in fact. It just happened a huge confusion, originating from confused and unclear messages from Intel, even less well received by the press.

During the announcement conference of the mobile GPU, last March 30, the Santa Clara house did indeed use conflicting messages: on the one hand the presenter, Roger Chandler (general manager of the Graphics and Gaming Team), has declared more times than the first product with Intel Arc 3 GPU, the Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro, would have been available to “preorder” immediately.

He therefore never spoke of immediate availability, because a reservation blocks a purchase that will be delivered in the future, it does not guarantee receipt in the short term. The note sent to us by Intel Italy also reads “The first Arc 3 laptops are now available for pre-order“, without, however, clear where (another important element).

At the same time we talk about confusion why the slides shown from Intel (you see one, but there is at least one other) they talk about immediate availability (Available Now, available now). Different and therefore confusing messages.

Intel, we recall, in mid-February exposed itself by ensuring the arrival of the mobile Arc GPUs in Q1. The launch event was held on March 30, one day before the end of the quarter: it cannot be excluded that Intel deliberately used an asymmetry between words and slides in order to make you think you have hit the target of Q1. But, we admit, we could be mischievous.

But to get to the heart of the matter, we have to jump on Twitter and more specifically on the Intel Support account. Two days ago, responding to a user who asked for information on GPUs, this answer was given: “Hi! Laptops with Intel ARC will be available for purchase by the end of the second quarter of 2022“. Some sites immediately took back the quotation marks and talked about delay (who e whofor example), regardless of the booking statement.

To make the picture even more complex, however, there is the fact that Intel has never clarified where the first notebook with Arc 3 GPU would be bookable and this has generated further misunderstandings. Some US shops have in fact entered the Samsung notebook on sale ahead of time, indicating the presence of the new graphics solution from Intel, but users who received the product found themselves a model without Arc GPU. Shop, Samsung or Intel error? Who knows, but certainly a question arises: where is this Galaxy Book2 with Arc GPU?

To close the circle is always the Intel Support account that, this morning (perhaps after the articles of some sites on the delay), try to save goat and cabbage: “Apologies for the confusion, we had incorrect information. Samsung systems with Intel Arc graphics are available now in Korea and will scale to other regions. Additional OEMs in other regions will have systems in the coming weeks“.

The account then points out that Samsung systems with Arc graphics are now available in South Korea and, in the future, they will arrive in other regions of the world. We will also see models from other OEMs in other regions in the coming weeks.

From this reconstruction we extrapolate some points. The first is that Intel has been sending mixed messages, intentionally or not, but that’s the way it is. The second is that Intel did not clarify where the notebook would be available in preorder, generating further confusion. The third is that Intel wanted to live up to the Q1 date, but evidently needed more time to bring mobile Arc GPUs to market in quantity and supported by the necessary software ecosystem.

Can we therefore speak of a “paper launch”? Although the first answer would be a resounding yes, formally the possibility of buying / booking in South Korea (which we cannot easily verify), saves Intel from this wording, at least for now. But this is purely a facade, the reality is that we will hardly see a notebook with an Intel Arc GPU before the beginning of the summer.