Don’t buy Intel’s Arc graphics cards without knowing these 7 key details

The future of discrete graphics cards looks exciting and full of interesting competition.

- ALAINA YEE

Intel's Arc 7 graphics cards (fave.co/ 3DOEUWk) have been a long time coming. In fact, the wait stretched so long that excitement mostly fizzled about Team Blue taking on Nvidia and AMD. Gamers wanted a rescue from pandemic shortages and inflated pricing and got none.

But better late than never-especially when Intel's Arc A770 and A750 cards can pull out some impressive performance. Intel's first generation of discrete GPUs represents huge potential for a healthy competitive environment, with three players in the ring all vying for the title of best in class.

The problem is, Arc is first-gen technology, and it’s got teething pains to get through still. If you happen to play the right kind of games, the Intel Arc A770 (available in $349 16GB and $329 8GB flavors) or $289 Intel Arc A750 might work for you. But if not, you should wait, or pick up a different card altogether.

Our comprehensive Arc A770 and A750 review (fave.co/3g2HHuI) cover the full details, but here are the basics of what to expect from these cards, which arrived on October 12.

ONLY MODERN PCS NEED APPLY

Was your CPU manufactured before 2019? If you own something older than an AMD Ryzen 3000 (2019) or Intel 10th-generation Comet Lake (2020) processor, you’ll likely want a graphics card from a competing vendor.

The reason: Intel’s Arc cards lean heavily on a feature called resizable BAR (fave. co/3aReZar), which is only available in modern processors. In fact, they only shipped as an out-of-the-box feature for Ryzen 5000 and 12th-generation Intel chips. You must perform a motherboard BIOS update before enabling it for older compatible chips.