Intel suggests how much Arc GPUs might cost

Intel Xe-HPG Scavenger Hunt began on March 2021 and lasted for many months afterwards. Groups of enthusiasts, discord fans or even press reviewers (yes, really) spent countless hours to win the Hunt and get their hands on Intel Arc GPUs before others. It’s August 2022 already and there the prizes were still not delivered to the 300 winners.

Intel is now offering an alternative, or should one say, forcing the alternative to the winners. Instead of the Arc A7-series GPUs (grand prize is A770 GPU and first prize is A750), winners can now choose Core i7-12700K or Core i5-12600K CPUs instead. This information is interesting for many reasons, mainly because we can finally pinpoint how much are Arc GPUs going to cost.

The i7-12700K MSRP is 409 USD while i5-12600K is 289 USD. This means that Arc A770 and A750 pricing should correspond to Core CPU pricing more or less. The flagship A770 GPU might cost less than 410 USD, which is a great price for 16GB GPU for sure. Naturally we don’t expect Core CPU pricing to be exactly the same as Arc A7 series, but this should be a very good estimate.

Intel email to Xe-HPG Scavenger Hunt winners, Source: Intel

What is a bit shocking about these opt-out prizes is the fact that winners must pick either the alternative prizes or wait for Arc A7 launch which is ‘very close’ as per email. The must pick part is important, because if no choice is made, then alternative prizes will be shipped automatically, which is kind of strange considering people spent a year waiting for Arc GPUs and now get Core CPUs by default.

Scavenger Hunt winners must make a choice by August 19th, but it’s unclear how this date correlates with Arc GPU launch because the company is pretty silent about its ‘later this summer’ launch. Rumors suggest these cards should not become available till September at least, which is just a month before NVIDIA ships their next-gen GPUs.

Source: Intel