Intel will be working hard towards the goal of getting ‘millions’ of its incoming Arc graphics cards to PC gamers every year, according to a tweet from an exec.
Raja Koduri, who is chief architect of the graphics arm at Intel, made the comment in a tweet replying to a PC Gamer article which was an open letter to the chip giant. The letter pointed out the reality of the sky-high pricing of GPUs in the current duopoly, with the hope being that Intel can bring some much-needed competitiveness to the scene.
As Dave James of PC Gamer put it: “You don’t need to have the most powerful new GPU to release the best graphics card of 2022, you just need it to perform competitively and be priced at a level that doesn’t make us wish you’d at least bought us dinner first.”
I am with you, @pcgamer. This is a huge issue for PC gamers and the industry at large. @IntelGraphics is working hard to find a path towards the mission – getting millions of Arc GPUs into the hands of PC gamers every year https://t.co/bknQOvUMtiJanuary 29, 2022
As you can see, Koduri acknowledged that this is a “huge issue for PC gamers”, which it most certainly is – and one we’ve been banging on about ourselves for a good long while – and that Team Blue wants to work towards getting “millions of Arc GPUs into the hands of PC gamers every year.”
Analysis: Fingers crossed on the delivery of a big promise
That sounds like a big promise, and it’s talk we’re glad to hear – but at the moment it’s just that: talk. How many graphics cards Intel can bring to the table when Arc Alchemist cards first hit the market – maybe in March or April this year, or so the rumor mill is guessing – is the key question, as Intel, too, will need to contend with chip shortages and everything else plaguing the existing GPU production from AMD and Nvidia.
The mention of ‘every year’ in Koduri’s statement hints at this being a longer-term ambition, so in the near future – what with every supply crisis prediction we hear seeming to only consider recovery as coming in the second half of 2022 – we don’t know if there’s much cause for optimism in terms of Intel helping to push a meaningful swing towards a more normal state of stock levels in the graphics card arena.
Still, that said, there are signs that the GPU recovery could start to see some progress from March onwards – with better availability of ABF substrates (read up more on that here) – and graphics card prices are at least now heading downwards (even if they’re still well above recommended price tags). So, Intel may be able to make more of an impact than we imagine, and whatever the case, any new supply will be very welcome – particularly if Intel can attempt to hit AMD and Nvidia by undercutting on pricing.
Team Blue does have an opportunity to carve into the market here, it’s clear, and making a good initial impression with value proposition would be a great way to do that – as well as ensuring graphics drivers are up to scratch as well as the hardware. Any delay is understandable in maximizing the quality of the software, of course, and we hope that if the launch timeframe does slip as the grapevine seems to suggest, it’s due to that, rather than shakiness around potential stock levels at release.