Intel Arc A Series GPUs finally out for laptops; Desktop card teased for summer launch

Intel has just launched its Arc A-Series GPUs for laptops. This announcement comes just weeks after the company first shared the information about the formal launch event. The company first announced its Arc brand last year in August. It also showcased some of the initial Intel Arc-powered laptop and desktop products at CES 2022. Arc is a major step for Intel as it enters the computer graphics and gaming market. The company has spent years laying the foundation for Arc with high-profile hires and investments. As part of the move, the company will compete with existing industry heavyweights like Nvidia and AMD. All Intel Arc GPUs will come with features and technologies like AI-based XeSS upscaling, DirectX 12 Ultimate, AV1 encode, Deep Link Technologies, and Arc Control. Here is everything Intel shared about its Arc A-Series GPUs for laptops.

Hardware features of Intel Arc A-Series GPUs

AI-powered Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) Upscaling: XeSS is the highlight of the Intel Arc lineup that will enable Intel to compete with Nvidia. As the name suggests, Intel Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) technology is an AI-powered feature. It allows the GPU to upscale the output of the games one is playing on the system without any performance hit. This means that it can take a lower output and upscale it to higher quality without a drastic loss in visual quality. In the end, this means that gamers can play games at a higher resolution (and better quality) than the capability of their gaming laptop.

The technology uses the XMX AI engine to work and game developers need to manually add the support to their games. However, the technology is not ready yet and it will come to all Arc A-series GPUs this summer. XeSS will work in more than 20 games at launch including Death Stranding, Ghostwire Tokyo, and Hitman III.

DirectX 12 Ultimate: Arc will also support DirectX 12 Ultimate along with hardware-accelerated ray tracing, variable-rate shading, mesh shading, and sampler feedback. All these different technologies will result in better, more realistic image quality, lighting, and texture.

Xe High-Performance Graphics (Xe HPG) architecture: Xe HPG architecture is the base of all the features and capabilities of Arc. It is engineered from the ground up for gamers and creators with powerful Xe cores. In addition, Intel has also added integrated AI engines (XMX) within the architecture to accelerate AI workloads like XeSS.

AV1 hardware-accelerated encode, XMX, Xe Media Engine: Intel Arc is the first GPU to offer hardware-accelerated encoding for AV1 codec. Hardware-encoding allows one to deliver smoother, higher-quality streaming for game streamers. It reportedly provides a 50X improvement in encoding speed, as compared to traditional software encoding. The company also claims that XMX is about 16 times more powerful for AI workloads than traditional GPU cores. Finally, Intel also shared information about Xe Media Engine aimed at video encoding and decoding for creators.

Software features and tech in Intel Arc GPUs:

Intel Deep Link Technologies: Deep Link ensures seamless coordination between Arc GPUs, Intel CPUs, and integrated graphics including dynamic power-sharing. Dynamic Power-sharing will allow Intel CPUs to distribute power between all three components across the platform based on the system needs. Other features of the technology include ‘Hyper-Compute’ for AI and hyper-encode for content creation.

Arc Control Software: This software will allow users to control all aspects of the Arc GPUs including the game drivers. Other things that users can control include GPU settings for games, performance tuning, a unified game library, and hardware stats. As part of the driver updates, Intel will use the software to deliver “Day Zero game-ready drivers”.

Where will the Arc graphics A-Series be available?

The first Arc 3-powered laptop is now available on the market. Intel has also shared details about two Arc 3 GPU models along with multiple upcoming gaming laptops from multiple companies. Talking about the GPU models, we get A350M, the base product aimed at ultra-thin designs. The second GPU model coming in thin and light laptop designs is the A370M. As the name suggests, the A370M is more powerful than the A350M model.

Intel also shared some performance numbers with claims of achieving above 60fps at 1080p resolution in low or medium settings. One performance slide shows Arc 3 achieving 90fps on most games with a maximum of 115fps in Valorant. The Arc 5 and Arc 7 laptops will launch this summer which is still a few months away. Both these lineups of GPUs will compete with offerings from Nvidia and AMD at the mid to high-end. However, they will likely not be able to compete with the competition at the top-end.

Many of the first Intel Arc laptops will follow the Evo platform design guidelines. Intel has teamed up with ASUS, Lenovo, Acer, HP, and more for the initial wave of Arc-powered devices. It also highlighted some of the upcoming models during the announcement. The company also launched Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro, the first Intel Arc 3 equipped laptop during the event. This laptop features a sleek design with an OLED screen. Interested buyers can pre-ordered the model now and get an instant cashback of Rs 5000. Samsung India has priced the base model of the laptop at Rs. 1,06,990.

Finally, the company also shared the list of games optimized for the Arc platform. These titles include Elden Ring, Ghostwire Tokyo, League of Legends, Apex Legends, Destiny 2, CS GO, Valorant, and Hitman 3.