Intel, the Arc GPUs for notebooks unveiled on March 30: we start with Arc A370M

The March 30th at 4pm Italian time Intel will present her first dedicated GPUs destined to notebook. The solutions Arc first generation, codenamed Alchemist, will appeal to gamers and content creators. The US company had anticipated its imminent arrival at CES 2022, confirming the start of delivery of the chips to OEMs, ie PC manufacturers, and then reiterating the debut within the first quarter. By staring at the event on March 30, Intel practically reaches the photo finish.

Arc dedicated notebook GPUs they precede the desktop solutions expected in the second quarter and those workstations coming in the third quarter. In a post by Lisa Pearce, Vice President and General Manager of the Visual Compute Group, Intel explained that the first product to arrive on the market will be called Intel Arc A370M.

The new GPU “will allow an improvement in graphics performance up to two times compared to integrated graphics alone“, assures Pearce. It will not be the most powerful graphics chip, Intel plans to introduce even more powerful configurations laterin order to satisfy those looking for more performance.

The doubling of performance was found with Metro Exodus in DirectX 12 resolution Full HD with medium details on a system with Core i7-12700H CPU (14 cores / 20 threads), 32 GB of DDR5-4800 memory and precisely an Intel Arc A370M GPU. A system that Intel estimates has a TDP of 40W.

The notebook with integrated graphics used for the comparison expected an Intel Core i7-1280P always with 14 cores / 20 threads and an Iris Xe graphics with 96 EU (Arc A370M should have 128). Also in this case there were 32 GB of DDR5-4800 memory, for an estimated total TDP of 28W.

The new Arc A370M GPU should therefore produce performance for gaming in Full HD with variable details depending on the title, probably as average in most cases as Metro Exodus. The GPU will also support the ray tracing in hardware and will make use of technologies such as Intel XeSS, the “DLSS in Intel sauce”.

“Software optimization is critical for delivering maximum GPU performance, but we will need time to mature the ecosystem for all applications. So, to speed up performance right out of the box, we have developed application optimization techniques (such as shader tuning) that ensure an exceptional experience with the best applications, while our compiler matures in parallel. These optimizations are active for the 50 most used applications and we are rapidly expanding our coverage to the top 100, ”explains Pearce.

Compatibility will also be key. “While nearly all applications should work, we have tested the top 100 applications for compatibility and performance and are expanding our coverage to the top 200.”

“For games, we will publish simple summaries to help end users understand the capabilities of each specific product. For example, we will publish the number of games that can be played at 1080p or 1440p resolution at medium or high quality settings,” Pearce concludes.