Hands On With Intel's Arc A770 Limited Edition: A New Card Player Enters the Arena

pcmag.com:

We tested Intel's Arc A380 a few weeks back (via a card from board maker Asrock), and it was an interesting entry in the graphics card market. It wasn't particularly powerful, but it was one of the lowest-cost new-issue graphics cards we've seen launched in several years. (We paid $129.99 for ours.) More important: It was the first major-maker graphics card we've seen for general consumers in decades that didn't have an AMD or Nvidia GPU at its heart. It's built on Intel's Arc's GPU and the company's first-generation "Alchemist" graphics architecture.

That A380 card, however, was something of a teaser. Intel's real effort to break into the graphics card market is focused around its Intel Arc A770 and Intel Arc A750. And now, we've been able to get our first look at the Arc A770, which is due to launch in October.

Intel's been releasing details about its graphics card product line, in a steady trickle, over the last several weeks, and most of the basic details around these cards are already known. But we hadn't actually seen one of these cards in person prior to today. The card we have in hand is Intel's Arc A770 Limited Edition, which is an interesting specimen, as Intel itself is the primary brand on the card, not an OEM partner.

This is a similar situation to how Nvidia creates its Founders Edition graphics cards. But what's unusual about this card's launch is that we may see the majority of Intel graphics cards that hit the market being made entirely by Intel at launch. We've not heard, for certain, about any OEMs signing on to make a version of the Arc A770 or A750 at this time.

As for this exact model, it has quite the premium feel for a graphics card that's set to retail for $349.99. The cooler is somewhat