Intel is promising 1080p gaming, at 60 fps for its low-end Arc 3 mobile GPUs. Not its lowest-end graphics chip, however, but the eight Xe-core version, A370M. Still, that's not a bad return from a 128 EU GPU, even if you are probably going to have to drop your in-game settings down to medium to benefit.
Intel has now launched its first gaming GPUs for thin and light laptops, with discrete graphics cards for actual gaming laptops coming in early summer this year. And what of its desktop Arcs? Well, we've at least seen what Intel's Arc A-series Limited Edition graphics card is going to look like when they arrive later in the summer.
But the performance on offer is looking pretty decent for a mainstream GPU, with games such as Destiny 2, The Witcher (3?), and Hitman 3 topping the 60 fps mark on Medium graphics settings, with Doom Eternal and AMD's favourite, Strange Brigade able to do so on High presets.
AMD's integrated GPUs have been promising similar things, unfortunately we don't have comparable benchmarks to be able to put the 680M up against Intel's promises. Though if the Witcher performance does translate between the two, then the Arc A370M looks like a more powerful option than AMD's latest integrated chip.
But then, you'd hope so, it being a discrete GPU and all that.
It's a good sign for the rest of the Arc range, if the low point in the stack is able to genuinely game, then the Arc 5 and Arc 7 GPUs should be able to offer some serious competition to AMD and Nvidia.
Just when the graphics card market is starting to pick up again.
With the discrete desktop Intel Arc GPUs not launching until the summer, has Intel missed its window of opportunity? There was a point at the start of the year where, had Intel released a card that was at least competitive it would have cleaned up, but now there are more of the competition's cards available and at decent prices, will Intel still be able to shift its virgin GPUs?
