Intel: Buy GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD if you can’t enable Resizable BAR

Intel continues in his slow but inexorable work of “evangelization” on GPU Arc. Waiting for the company to let us know something about the debut in Italy, the duo formed by Tom Petersen and Ryan Shrout is touring the seven churches in the United States and Europe, releasing interviews that add to the various official information released in recent weeks. , internal tests included.

And just from two interviews, with PC Games Hardware e Digital Foundrycomes the confirmation that the models Arc A770 and A750 will debut not only together, but will soon – albeit in limited quantities. The Limited Edition versions, or Intel’s reference designs, will be available for purchase from the company’s website while the custom versions of the partners, even with factory OCs, will arrive in stores.

Tom Petersen did not disclose which AIB partners they are working with Intel with, but the company claims to have contacted everyone. The new cards will debut not only in the United States, but even in some “key countries” such as Germany. As for the specifications, Intel stated that Arc A770 can arrive on the market with 8 and 16 GB of memory, but the Limited Edition version will only be available with 16GB. The Arc A750, on the other hand, stops at 8 GB. For now, no information has been released on the A580, the SKU of the lineup designed to stand between the A380 and the A750.

On the performance front, Petersen stated – but the recently published slides had clearly anticipated it – that Arc A770 delivers performance that straddles the GeForce RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 Ti, while at the same time placing itself above AMD’s Radeon RX 6600 XT. Intel’s goal, in addition to optimizing the drivers to gain more performance (even if drastic improvements are not to be expected) and fixing bugs, is to check the price of the cards so that the relationship between price and performance is attractive.

Especially interesting is a statement on Resizable BAR, the technology introduced last year thanks to which the processor can efficiently access the entire graphics memory, returning greater performance. According to Petersen, Intel GPUs are optimized for this technology and not for the “old scenario” where continuous data transfers (textures, shaders, geometers, etc.) were required between the two components.

Consequentially, advice to those who cannot activate the technology because it is equipped with a slightly dated PC opt for GPUs from other manufacturers, i.e. NVIDIA and AMD. Arc GPUs without Resizable BAR, in fact, can lose up to 40% of performance. The situation should not change much with the first generation Arc despite the optimizations on the software side, while it could improve more with future generations Battlemage and Celestial, assures Intel.