Intel Arc A310 Graphics Card Quietly Goes Official

By Mark Tyson
last updated

Stealth Mode Activated

Arc A300 series graphics cards
(Image credit: Intel)

Intel has undercut its entry-level Arc A380 with the official reveal of the previously leaked Arc A310. The Arc A380 wasn’t a powerhouse by any means and the new A310, based on the same "6nm" TSMC fabbed ACM-G11 GPU, offers only six Xe cores (versus A380's eight), and 50% less VRAM (4GB versus 6GB) on a narrower 64-bit bus. From what we have seen in the leaks and spills leading up to today, the Intel Arc A310 will be mostly sold to folks who only have the need for basic GPU acceleration, and perhaps only have room for a low profile graphics card design that doesn’t require additional power connectors. It's probably safe to say that the A310 won't make it on to our list of best best graphics cards for gaming in 2022.

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Comparison between A410 and A380 GPUs
(Image credit: Intel)

When a graphics card goes official there is often a flurry of partner press releases and product pages uploaded. So far, the Arc A310 looks a little neglected in the partner-love stakes, perhaps due to its unglamorous low-end nature. Either that or the Intel product specifications release took partners by surprise. Nevertheless, we now have the official specs, so let’s plug them into our comparison table.

MSI Arc A310 leak

(Image credit: Ilya Korneychuk/Twitter)

Intel Arc Alchemist Specifications

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Arc A770

Arc A750

Arc A580

Arc A380

Arc A310

Architecture

ACM-G10

ACM-G10

ACM-G10

ACM-G11

ACM-G11

Process Technology

TSMC N6

TSMC N6

TSMC N6

TSMC N6

TSMC N6

Transistors (Billion)

21.7

21.7

21.7

7.2

7.2

Die size (mm^2)

406

406

406

157

157

Xe-Cores

32

28

24

8

6

GPU Cores (Shaders)

4096

3584

3072

1024

768

MXM Engines

512

448

384

128

96

RTUs

32

28

24

8

6

Game Clock (MHz)

2100

2050

1700

2000

2000

VRAM Speed (Gbps)

17.5

16

16

15.5

15.5

VRAM (GB)

16/8

8

8

6

4

VRAM Bus Width

256

256

256

96

64

ROPs

128

128

128

32

32?

TMUs

256

224

192

6448

TFLOPS FP32 (Boost)

17.2

14.7

10.4

4.13.1

TFLOPS FP16 (MXM)

138

118

84

32.824.6

Bandwidth (GBps)

560

512

512

186

124

PCIe Link

x16 4.0

x16 4.0

x16 4.0

x8 4.0x16 4.0

TBP (watts)

225

225

150?

75

75

Launch Date

Oct 12, 2022

Oct 12, 2022

Oct 2022?

June 2022

Oct 2022

Starting Price

$329 (8GB)

?

?

$139

?

At this stage there are some oddities and / or discrepancies in Intel’s Arc 310 specs depending where you look. On one page the Game Clock of this card is 2,000 MHz, on another official Intel site it is 2,100 MHz. Also we see that it purportedly offers PCIe 4.0 x16 support, but the A380 is limited to x8, which would be peculiar. Lastly, Intel mentions the Arc A310 is a 75W graphics card, just like the A380, but we reckon it could easily shave some watts off that in low-profile partner solutions.

Yesterday, after an eternity of “soon,” Intel announced that the Arc A770 will start at $329 (8GB), with a launch date of October 12. No mention was made of this A310, but the specs were shared just a few hours ago. Thanks to momomo_us for bringing them to light. We have no word on Arc A310 availability or pricing for now. We would also like to know what is happening with the Arc 580 card Intel has previously discussed, as we have the Arc A580 specs tabulated above, but it's not visible in Intel Ark.

Mark Tyson
Mark Tyson
Freelance News Writer

Mark Tyson is a Freelance News Writer at Tom's Hardware US. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • King_V
    and 50% less VRAM (4GB versus 6GB)
    That would be 33% less RAM. Or you could say that the A380 has 50% more RAM.
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    Wait, this lil' thing is X16 while the 380 is X8? That doesn't make sense; is that correct? EDIT: I just saw the official slides and they list it as "up to", so both the 380 and 310 could be X16. I didn't know that.

    Other than that, I wonder what the purpose of this card really is? There already exists a 380 without a 6pin, so this would need to be for a very specific market or OEM reject perhaps?

    Regards.
    Reply
  • ezst036
    There would probably be room for a few of these models to be a PCIe 1x GPU.
    Reply
  • King_V
    -Fran- said:
    Other than that, I wonder what the purpose of this card really is? There already exists a 380 without a 6pin, so this would need to be for a very specific market or OEM reject perhaps?

    I suspect that, while they officially list the power at 75W, it's probably significantly lower, so, I would assume that it could more easily be made into a low-profile card while also having a single-slot-height cooler.
    Reply
  • ThisIsMe
    No matter how fast/good the new nVidia 40xx video encoder is/will be, these non-pro cards are still limited to 2 simultaneous encodes/transcodes. AMD’s video capabilities for RDNA 3 are still unknown, but all of their current and previous cards are now in third place.

    I can see many people buying these lower cost Intel GPU’s just to upgrade their video processing capabilities. A workstation with 4 ARC cards installed would be a video rendering powerhouse. All for the price of a single nVidia consumer card. Or simply slap one of these into an unused slot along side your existing 3070/80/90 and call it a day.
    Reply
  • Eximo
    I'm tempted to buy a new case after putting the ASRock A380 in my HTPC, the 8-pin power connector comes out right where the SATA power leads come out the back of my SATA SSD. Quite an effort to get that to fit. But the MSI A380 without a power connector isn't intended for direct sale, not sure I would go for a A310 unless it was like $75, if it is closer to $100, then the A380 makes more sense (as long as you have a PCIe 8-pin. I didn't, but I got a new SFX power supply, the old one had a six-pin, but was also pushing 10 years old.

    Took me a bit to get the audio working via HDMI, but after that, no complaints for general use and video playback. Tried one old DX9 title. Worked okay, but it did stutter when loading in new assets for some reason. Maybe a DX12 conversion hiccup?

    Might take it apart and re-paste it or something. It is right on the threshold of being passively cooled for video playback, spins the fan about once every three minutes or so. Need to measure it and see if there are any heatsinks that might fit it better.
    Reply
  • cschepers
    -Fran- said:
    Other than that, I wonder what the purpose of this card really is? There already exists a 380 without a 6pin, so this would need to be for a very specific market or OEM reject perhaps?

    My guess is it's for corporate PC's that need a dedicated GPU (i.e. replacement for the GT730), or for folks that want the cheapest/smallest/low-power-est GPU encoding for Plex. Or what I want, something for my old WFH PC that can do hardware encoding for WebEx/Teams/Zoom/whatever.
    Reply
  • RedBear87
    Also we see that it purportedly offers PCIe 4.0 x16 support, but the A380 is limited to x8, which would be peculiar.
    I think it's similar to the description on their website for the A380they probably mean that it supports x16 mechanical connections.
    Reply