Intel has started launching its ARC Alchemist line of GPUs in parts of the world. The ARC A380 has been launched in China and the company is prepping an A750 and an A770 for launch in the upcoming few weeks. The company has to release all of its current-gen GPUs before Nvidia introduces its RTX 40 series and AMD comes up with RDNA 3 based offerings. Thus, it is crucial to catch air with Intel’s naming scheme for these GPUs.
Breakdown of Intel’s GPU Names
Intel’s ARC GPUs have an interesting naming convention. An usual name has four characters. This include one letter and three digits.
The first character will be a letter and it will signify the architecture on which the GPU in question has been designed. This means ‘A’ for the current Alchemist lineup, ‘B’ for the upcoming Battlemage, ‘C’ for the Celestial and ‘D’ for the Druid lineups. The first letter can be considered equivalent to the ’30’ and ’20’ numbers at the beginning of Nvidia GPUs and ‘5’ and ‘6’ in the beginning of AMD GPUs.
The second character is a number. It signifies the lineup this GPU belongs to. Currently, there are three lineups. These include the ARC 3, the ARC 5, and the ARC 7. The last two characters signify the exact SKU of the GPU in question. You can assume the naming to be equivalent to the Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 branding and the many SKUs under them.
Intel is yet to launch the Alchemist GPUs worldwide. Currently, the A380 GPU has been launched in China. The card is supposed to arrive to the US within a few weeks. The company has not revealed an official date yet, which is quite intriguing. They missed the Q1 2022 launch target, and further delay is not going to favor the American chip manufacturer.
