Cast your mind back to over a year ago, and you may recall Intel announced some new Arc GPUs – including an A580 mid-range effort (or, well, lower-mid-range technically).
Have you been wondering what happened to this GPU? You’re not alone, and VideoCardz just made a case that is difficult to argue with – namely that at this point, the graphics card appears to have been ditched by Intel.
As the tech site observes, the A580 was revealed well over a year ago now as part of incoming Arc GPUs that included the A770 and A750, as well as the A380.
Now, that latter trio of graphics cards have all been realized as products, but the A580 simply hasn’t turned up.
Moreover, if it was going to be announced, Intel would surely have said something at its recent Innovation event, but Team Blue didn’t mention anything about Arc GPUs at all (or Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs for that matter, too).
In fact, Intel hasn’t mentioned the A580 since its initial revelation back over a year ago, pretty much sweeping the GPU under the carpet for all intents and purposes.
Analysis: End of the story Arc for Alchemist?
At this point, then, it seems a pretty safe bet that the Arc A580 has been canceled. If Intel was still intending to debut this A5 GPU, surely the Innovation event that just happened was the last potential stop for a launch confirmation of some kind.
Because now, we’re looking down the road at Battlemage graphics cards, Intel’s second-generation of Arc products. Time has surely been called on the first-gen of Arc at this stage, and it’s kind of a shame that we never got to see what a more middle-of-the-road Alchemist offering might have done.
With the specs Intel announced, the A580 wouldn’t have been that far off the A750, but could have provided a more affordable entry point for gamers wanting to splash out a little less cash (and perhaps have made its mark on our best cheap graphics cards list). Mind you, perhaps its proximity to the A750 specs-wise is why Intel has waited, and waited, and ultimately decided it’s not worth the trouble to launch the A580.
At this point, we can only offer up speculation, but it does seem odd to us that Intel hasn’t seen fit to mention anything about this Alchemist GPU that never was, which if anything marks the idea out as an embarrassing misstep of some kind for the Arc range.
As mentioned, all eyes are on Battlemage now, graphics cards that are set to debut next year, perhaps around the middle of 2024, or slightly later, which would leave little room for anything else to launch now. Or that’s the current rumored launch timeframe, and we should of course bear in mind that even if it’s true at this point, we could easily see slippage with Battlemage yet (as we did with Alchemist itself).
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