Intel has three new graphics cards coming up, but they don’t include the gaming Arc Alchemist that you probably had in mind. The company has just announced the Intel Arc Pro A-series, a new discrete graphics card line made for professionals.
Announced during SIGGRAPH 2022, the range includes the Arc Pro A30M for mobile workstations and the Arc Pro A40 and Arc Pro A50 for small-form-factor desktops.
It seems that the previous rumors were true — there is, in fact, an Intel Arc Pro lineup, and the company has just officially unveiled it. With three new GPUs coming soon, Intel is entering the workstation market with its discrete graphics cards.
Intel said that the new GPUs were made to meet the requirements of all kinds of professional software. This includes applications within the design, manufacturing, media, entertainment, architecture, engineering, and construction segments.
Although the exact specifications of these new workstation GPUs have not yet been revealed, we know that the Arc Pro A30M will find its way into laptop workstations and the other two will be installed in compact desktops. One more thing we know is that the Arc Pro A40 is a single-slot GPU and the Arc Pro A50 is a dual-slot model. Given the naming convention, we expect that these will be entry-to-midrange options, seeing as Intel’s flagship Arc GPU is the A770.
Intel promises support for all the latest technologies utilized by professionals. The new graphics cards all feature built-in ray tracing, AV1 hardware encoding acceleration, and machine learning capabilities. This includes the widely used Blender as well as various open-source libraries included in the Intel oneAPI Rendering Toolkit.
Intel is demo-ing the cards in a few different applications during this year’s SIGGRAPH, marking the first time that the Arc Pro is running live in public. The manufacturer will be showing off its new product, and more precisely its hardware-accelerated artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, in Topaz Video Enhance AI, a software that enhances video quality and resolution.
The GPUs will also be seen running Trimble’s SketchUp, a 3D designing app often used for architectural purposes. This will be done to show that even an entry-level workstation running an Arc Pro GPU will be able to perform these tasks due to hardware-accelerated ray tracing and hardware-assisted A.I. via Intel’s XeSS.
You don’t have to be there in person to see what Intel Arc Pro can do — Intel has little previews on its official website with sliders that let you compare the “before” with the “after.” The video enhanced by Topaz loses some of its colors and contrasts but turns out a whole lot less grainy. The SketchUp preview turns a drawing into a lifelike-looking render.
Intel Arc Pro A-series graphics cards will be available at an undisclosed time later this year. For now, there’s no info on pricing, though. Seeing as we’re also awaiting the official and global launch of the Intel Arc lineup made for consumers, it now seems that Intel will be releasing several GPUs before the year is done.
