We have been waiting a long time. Intel has finally announced the release date and price for the upcoming Arc A770 graphics card: October 12 at $329.

Intel had said that the upcoming A770 and A750 graphics cards would be competitively priced, at least it seems likely for the A770; the A750's price is not yet known.

The A770 will reportedly go head-to-head with the RTX 3060 (open in new tab) in terms of performance, and Intel has said it will at least be equal or better in DX12 and Vulkan games, so this price makes a lot of sense. In fact, it has the exact same MSRP as Nvidia's popular budget GPU, but Intel states that the RTX 3060 is not actually available at that price, instead pricing its cards at around $418.

Intel had previously told us that we would see "a faster card than the [RTX] 3060, but at a lower price." Intel said that the A750 should compete with, and in some cases beat, the RTX 3060; the A750 should cost less than the RTX 3060, but we have yet to confirm the price of this card. In any case, we hope Intel keeps its promise.

Having just looked around at a few retailers, I would agree that Nvidia's card is not selling for anywhere near MSRP. But at least you can find them a touch cheaper than mentioned, like this MSI model for $410 (opens in new tab).

But the point is well taken, Intel. If they can maintain this price and keep a steady supply of cards (the company has stated that they have enough cards available, but will supply them gradually), they may prove to be a decent card for gamers on a lower budget.

At this price, however, it will be up against AMD, and the RX 6600 (open in new tab), which launched at about the same price, can now often be found for less. This Radeon card tends to fall behind the RTX 3060 (open in new tab) in our tests, but the performance of Intel's A770 seems to really depend on the API chosen.

On Vulkan and DX12, Intel seems confident in the A770's performance. But not so with DX11 and older APIs. At least in ray tracing games, Intel seems confident in the A770's capabilities. In ray tracing, they even state that "peak performance" is 65% better than the "competition" (presumably RTX 3060).

However, who knows if Intel's third-party models will also carry a $329 price tag; Intel has only confirmed here the MSRP of the A770 Limited Edition model, a card that will be produced under its own brand and not rely on AIB model. So far, we don't know which partners Intel has secured for the upcoming 1st generation Arc GPUs, but we do know that they are talking to at least a few companies: ASRock makes the A380 GPU, which was Intel's first and very low-end discrete GPU It was.

Admittedly, there are still some unknowns about Arc. Thankfully, as Pat mentioned at Intel Innovation, the Intel A770 card will be distributed to reviewers, including you. Stay tuned.