One AIB reportedly no longer interested in Arc
Igor’LAB reports first OEM is jumping ship on Arc GPUs.
A big board partner is no longer producing Intel Arc GPUs. This is alleged by Igor Wallossek who confirmed this information twice over the last day.
Igor is not naming the brand, but his post has a picture of MSI system, indirectly suggesting that this might be the company in question. MSI is actually one of the few companies that did ‘confirm’ making Arc graphics, either through ads for prebuilt systems on Chinese retailer websites or through leaked datasheets.
From OEMs perspective, there is just too much uncertainty in terms of performance and price. Intel reportedly would not give Arc any price guarantee, making planning much more complicated. This is probably why we have never heard of any high-end custom model based on Arc, the only rumors were about mid-range solutions such as ASUS TUF.
At least one of the big board partners has even stopped the production of Intel cards completely (“due to quality concerns“), as I could find out yesterday and today. […] Other board partners have at least already completely capped their marketing activities, and it does not currently look as if there will be any real launch offensives from the board partners in the time window I mentioned between August 5, 2022 and September 29, 2022. What will really arrive on the market (as retail) will be seen in the next few weeks. From the customer’s point of view, I can only hope for the best, I alone lack faith.
— Igor’sLAB
GPU Quality and performance may lead to driving the maintenance cost up, this includes higher RMA rates and lesser demand for parts that have unoptimized drivers. That’s why the production of ARC cards might have been stopped by said board partner (but there is no word on cancelation just yet).
Intel is now busy sharing videos answering questions from the community. The most recent one covers the graphics API support for Arc. It’s hard to believe that this is the most important question right now, while literally everyone just wants to know when Arc desktop becomes available and at what price.
Source: Igor’sLAB
