Intel's Graphics Marketing head, Ryan Shrout, has taken to Twitter to boast about getting his hands on a lesser spotted Arc A380 graphics card. It is striking that it has taken three weeks, since the China launch of the A380, for Intel Marketing in the U.S. to get hold of one of these retail card samples. However, it makes us feel less bad about not being able to source one for our labs so far.
In Shrout's Tweet, he commented that the Gunnir Photon Arc A380 isn't easy to get "locally," but anyone who does so is going to get a "solid value" graphics card for "mainstream 1080pMed gaming, DX12 Ultimate, AV1 HW encode." Shrout mentioned that the China sample was approximately $130 - $140, but U.S. partner retail pricing (and EMEA pricing) remains a mystery.
The video is worth a watch for those with any interest or hope for the future of Intel discrete GPUs. The video consists of a standard unboxing style presentation, with an overview of construction, ports, fans, power connector, backplate, etc.
Later, the camera pulls back to show that one of the Gunnir cards was running in the background as Shrout was talking, plugged into an open test-bed system. Panning to the PC screen, we see the test system was gaming in PUBG 1080p Medium quality – in spectate-mode as Shrout was busy with his unboxing video.
To wrap up the video, the Intel Graphics marketing exec reminded us that the A380 offers AV1 acceleration and DeepLink capabilities and is suitable for content creation – as well as being capable of "some impressive mainstream gaming to compete with the AMD and Nvidia offerings at the same price point."
While you wait for Tom's Hardware review verdict on the Arc A380, early reviews of Intel's first Arc desktop graphics card can give you a sneak peek of the graphics card's performance. Moreover, Intel recently shared its tests on the Arc A380's gaming performance, covering 17 titles (including PUBG).
We still don't have a date for Arc A380 availability in the Americas or EMEA. In the video, Shrout said higher-end cards would be out later this summer but didn't specify what SKUs he was talking about or where they would launch within that time frame.
