Skip to main content

Intel CEO on high GPU prices: ‘You should be frustrated’

Intel finally put a date on its Arc Alchemist graphics cards during its Innovation 2022 event. The flagship A770 is releasing on October 12, but that’s not the most interesting part of the announcement. The card is only $330, and Intel says that’s a very intentional price point.

Before announcing the release date, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger had a clear message on high GPU prices: “You should be frustrated.” The executive showed how the cost of GPUs has risen significantly over the past few years, and said the A770 looks to break that trend. “[GPUs] have just gotten super expensive, and we don’t think they need to,” Gelsinger added.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger presenting Arc Alchemist GPUs.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

It’s an interesting comment on the heels of Nvidia’s RTX 4090 launch. Nvidia raised prices this generation, making already expensive graphics cards even more expensive. When questioned about the price hikes, Nvidia said that falling GPU prices were “a story of the past.” Nvidia cited the death of Moore’s Law as a justification for higher prices, but Intel had a response for that: “Moore’s Law is alive and well.”

Recommended Videos

Intel says that review samples are on the way to reviewers now, so we’ll finally get a sense of how the A770 performs in the real world. Arc Alchemist has been infamously delayed several times, but it seems Intel is finally ready to release the cards. Several prelaunch reviews showed issues with the drivers, but Intel seems to have ironed them out at this point.

Although the release date has continued to slip, Intel has been sending out regular updates on the upcoming range. Just a few weeks ago, Intel disclosed official Arc Alchemist specs, and executives have gone on the record about regrets with the rocky rollout.

Intel didn’t touch on performance during its keynote, but several prerelease previews have shown that the flagship A770 should perform around the level of an Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti. It’s not true flagship performance, but Intel hopes to earn back some favor with its XeSS tool, which promises to boost frame rates with AI upscaling.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the most powerful GPUs available today, but Intel’s keynote was a reminder that mainstream graphics cards are what make a difference. We’ll have to wait until we have a chance to test the cards, but Intel’s aggressive pricing could be a solid strategy to beat out Nvidia this generation.

Jacob Roach
Lead Reporter, PC Hardware
Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…
Intel just stole a page from Nvidia’s DLSS playbook
hp omen transcend 32 review 13

Intel is giving its XeSS upscaling tech a huge makeover. The aptly-named XeSS 2 steals -- or borrows, if we're being generous -- a page from Nvidia's DLSS 3, which has been a staple feature of some of the best graphics cards you can buy. XeSS 2 comes packed with super resolution like the original version, but also frame generation and a latency-reducing feature called XeLL. And it's launching alongside the new B580 graphics card.

Point-for-point, XeSS 2 is basically identical to DLSS 3. The super resolution portion functions much in the same way as the original XeSS, providing you with various different quality settings to render your game at a lower resolution in order to improve performance. On the upscaling side, the major change is native support for DirectX 12 and Vulkan, which should open up XeSS to more games.

Read more
Intel announces sudden departure of CEO amid financial turmoil
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger holding a chip.

Intel has announced that CEO Pat Gelsinger has retired. The executive, who first joined Intel in 1979 at 18 years old, is being replaced by David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus. Holthaus and Zinsner will serve as interim co-CEOs while the board of directors works "diligently and expeditiously" to find a successor.

Gelsinger became CEO in early 2021. At the time, Intel was struggling to regain ground it had lost to AMD in the desktop market, as well as push a more ambitious manufacturing timeline to catch up with foreign chipmakers like TSMC. Under Gelsinger's leadership, the company made some big strides. Intel's 12th generation of processors marked a significant turning point in the company's desktop processors, and an aggressive foundry roadmap has pushed smaller nodes out of U.S.-based plants.

Read more
Nvidia CEO in 1997: ‘We need to kill Intel’
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang at GTC

Those headline above includes strong words from the maker of the best graphics cards you can buy, and they have extra significance considering where Nvidia sits today in relation to Intel. But in 1997, things were a bit different. The quote comes from the upcoming book The Nvidia Way, written by columnist Tae Kim, and was shared as part of an excerpt ahead of the book's release next month.

The words from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang came as part of an all-hands meeting at the company in 1997 following the launch of the RIVA 128. This was prior to the release of the GeForce 256, when Nvidia finally coined the term "GPU," and it was a precarious time for the new company. Shortly following the release of the RIVA 128, Intel launched its own i740, which came with an 8MB frame buffer. The RIVA 128 came with only a 4MB frame buffer.

Read more