Intel's Arc A770 may be one of the best midrange graphics cards for gamers on a budget, but it's not the best choice for demanding gamers. Which is why Dell's decision to make the Arc A770 the default option for its older Alienware Aurora R15 gaming desktop raises eyebrows.
The base model of Dell's Alienware Aurora R15 featuring Intel's Core i7-13700F and Arc A770 16GB graphics board comes with a starting price of $1,949 in the U.S. and $2,699 in Canada, which is not exactly cheap. Dell's new offering marks a significant stride for Intel as this is one of the first gaming machines from a top 3 PC maker that packs both an Intel CPU and Intel graphics.
But that doesn't mean people will be buying it. Dell offers an option to switch to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 for just $50 extra. While the RTX 4070 has 12GB of memory, 4GB less than the Arc A770 16GB, it is widely recognized as a superior option for gaming. Furthermore, Dell's Alienware Aurora R15 with Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4060 Ti costs $1,899 and this option might also be better than an Arc A770.
The pricing strategy for the R15 is... interesting. The cheapest GeForce RTX 4060 Ti costs $359, while the cheapest Arc A770 16GB is priced at $289, so it is odd to see that the RTX 4060 Ti option is cheaper than the Arc A770 option.
Another question is which Intel Arc A770 graphics card Dell is using. Typically, large PC vendors buy boards directly from GPU developers or order AIBs from their manufacturing partners among contract makers of electronics. Intel itself discontinued its Arc A770 Limited Edition card a few months ago, so, it looks like Dell ordered a product from one of the electronics manufacturing service providers. That means the company has some degree of confidence in Intel's GPUs, which is at least good news for Intel.
Of course, the R15 is an older model to begin with: Dell has already moved on with the more streamlined Alienware Aurora R16.
