Intel Arc A770 price is a smart move to ensure the GPU isn't dead on arrival

techradar.com:

Sweet lord, it’s finally happening. That’s right, we have a confirmed release date for the Intel Arc A770, Team Blue’s current flagship graphics card in the much-beleaguered Arc GPU range.

Despite literal years of delays, unclear messaging, and analysts advising Intel to ditch the whole affair, CEO Pat Gelsinger stood up in front of the assembled masses at the latest Intel Innovation event and stated with something approaching joy that the discrete Arc cards are finally ready for a proper global launch, with the A770 card releasing on October 12. And in an even more shocking turn of events, it actually looks… good?

Perhaps I shouldn’t be all that surprised. Intel has, despite numerous setbacks, stuck to the message that it won’t be abandoning Arc and has big plans to forge ahead in the GPU market, going toe to toe with big dog Nvidia and its competitor in the CPU space, AMD. I’ve been critical of Intel’s faltering GPU efforts in the past, but only because it made me feel like a disappointed parent; I desperately wanted Arc to be good.

The Intel Arc A770 will be the most powerful card in the initial wave of Arc GPUs, some of which have already been sighted in laptops in Asia. We’ll also be getting a new Intel NUC PC equipped with the A770M mobile GPU. There’s no news yet on the lower-spec A750 or any of the even cheap A300 or A500 cards, but we do have a very sensible price tag for the Arc A770: just $329.

Considering that the A770 is expected to (just about) outperform Nvidia’s $399 RTX 3060 Ti, it’s a seriously good price point that will no doubt appeal to gamers on a budget. It also has double the VRAM of that card, with 16GB of GDDR6. Intel has tempered expectations by saying that performance is only for DirectX 12 games,