Intel Arc A380 graphics units launched in China, global release imminent
New Intel Arc A380 graphics units are set to bring next-generation technologies to gamers and content creators in the coming months.
Initially set to be rolled out in China, the A380 graphics processing unit (GPU) is the first of Intel's Arc A-series 3 graphics desktop products, which look to provide mainstream gamers and content creators with better solutions.
The unit contains 6GB of GDDR6 that look to support the latest games, and will be available from desktop PC ecosystem partners Acer, ASUS, Gigabyte, Gunnir, HP and MSI.
The company says the new Arc A-series 3 graphics desktop products represent the next step in their focus on bringing discrete graphics to market, with better all-round performance and working capacity.
The products are Intel's first fully-featured desktop cards based on the Intel Xe High Performance Graphics (Xe HPG) microarchitecture, with the company saying that the features significantly enhance overall performance.
A full set of DirectX 12 Ultimate features is also included, with capabilities like hardware accelerated ray tracing helping deliver fluid 1080p gaming experiences at 60 frames per second (FPS) and above.
Intel Xe Matrix Extensions (Intel XMX) AI acceleration engines are set to enable faster content creation and power Intel's AI-based super sampling technology, XeSS, which also arrives this coming summer.
An Xe Media Engine enables better video processing with industry-first hardware AV1 encoding acceleration, also supporting HEVC and H.264 encode and decode.
Xe Display Engine supports up to four 4K 120Hz HDR displays, up to two 8K 60Hz displays, or up to 360Hz for 1080p and 1440p resolutions.
Intel Deep Link technologies are also in place to help harness the power of Intel CPUs and GPUs to allow advanced levels of performance and efficiency across a variety of workloads.
Intel Arc A380 GPUs will be available in China this month through system builders and then as components by the original equipment manufacturers, followed shortly by system and component sales in other regions.
The Intel Arc A380 GPU has a recommended customer price of 1,030 yuan including VAT, and is said to deliver up to 25% better performance per yuan than available competitive offerings as measured by performance on a selection of popular games. The company remarked that the new offering is "the most complete technology feature set in this market segment, ready for next-generation workloads.
Pricing and testing was reflected as of June 12, 2022, and these results may not reflect in all publicly available updates.
