Intel's competition to win Xe Arc GPUs contains a hint about their prices

mongeese

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In a nutshell: Intel’s ongoing competition to win Xe Arc GPUs, merchandise, and gift cards is about to enter its second phase. In their updated terms and conditions, Intel hints at the prices and release date for two of their upcoming high-end GPUs.

Phase one of Intel’s competition was a little lackluster, but phase two promises to up the ante. A prize pool of $430,000 will be shared among 3,300 winners and entry is free.

Intel is offering up a "premium" Arc GPU, some merchandise, and six months of Xbox Game Pass to one hundred grand prize winners. They’re valuing the prize at $900, so if you subtract $60 for the pass and $50-100 for the merchandise, you’re left with a GPU that costs between $740 and $790.

First-place is offered to the next 200 winners. It includes a "performance" GPU, some merchandise, and three months of Xbox Game Pass. It’s valued at $700. Subtracting $30 for the game pass, and $50-100 for the merchandise, and the GPU is worth $570 to $620.

If we pretend that the GPUs will be sold at MSRP, then both GPUs’ price ranges sound quite reasonable. The top model is priced a touch above the RTX 3080 while its sibling costs about the same as the RTX 3070 Ti. Leaks suggest they’ll perform similarly to their Nvidia counterparts.

Second and third place prizes are $100 and $50 gift cards, respectively, that can be redeemed when purchasing an Intel GPU from one of their partners. There are 1,000 second-place prizes and 2,000 third-place prizes up for grabs.

Intel also explains how the competition works on the terms and conditions page. There’s a "clue period" that begins at 9 am PT on October 27, 2021 and ends at 11:59 pm on January 31, 2022. During the period, 10 Twitter accounts affiliated with Intel will post 10 clues.

Each clue will be a puzzle that needs solving. Once you’ve solved a puzzle you can submit the solution on Intel’s page, and you’ll receive 5,000 points if you’re first to do so, 4,999 points if you’re the second, and so on.

At the end of the period, competitors will be ranked based on the number of points they have and the prizes will be divvied up accordingly. Given that the prizes are all GPU-related, it’s likely that the end of the period will coincide with their release -- in other words, mark February 1, 2022 in the calendar.

Image credit: Christian Wiediger 

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Yeah, no: I am not paying 3080 money (MSRP or not) to have day 1 intel driver support experience (Hint: it's almost guaranteed to be from lackluster to barely functional or even non-functional for a good chunk of your games, think half of them)

Data centers and miners can pick these up for all I care and reviewers can bother with the endless streams of game crashes that are to be expected, thanks but no thanks intel.
 
Those MSRPs are expensive for newcomers, but we're so used by now to pay irrational prices that they look reasonable.
True, but the contest is going off MSRP. With intel also using TSMC and explicitly not limiting hash rates we know that their MSRP will be as inflated as Nvidia's: there's almost no chance you'll be able to pick one up for under 1200 USD probably closer to 1500-2000 range depending whenever you want day 1 or a couple months afterwards.

I think those are fair estimates given what we know.
 
Yeah, no: I am not paying 3080 money (MSRP or not) to have day 1 intel driver support experience (Hint: it's almost guaranteed to be from lackluster to barely functional or even non-functional for a good chunk of your games, think half of them)

Data centers and miners can pick these up for all I care and reviewers can bother with the endless streams of game crashes that are to be expected, thanks but no thanks intel.

Really, the only way anyone should pay comparable price to an already existing product of this type on its first generation upon launch is if, and only if, performance is on par with claims, and multiple honest (read: not financially or otherwise influenced) outlets can verify those claims *before* launch, with the intended general public launch drivers/software.

 
Pc gaming is for the rich at this point. Even the entry level of current gen gaming hardware prices many more consumers than ever, out of the market. As intended.

Material things can indeed bring happiness, but only loving one another can bring joy.

Happiness is fleeting and mostly insubstantial, but joy has the substance to sustain one's spirit as long as their heart remains open.
 
True, but the contest is going off MSRP. With intel also using TSMC and explicitly not limiting hash rates we know that their MSRP will be as inflated as Nvidia's: there's almost no chance you'll be able to pick one up for under 1200 USD probably closer to 1500-2000 range depending whenever you want day 1 or a couple months afterwards.

I think those are fair estimates given what we know.

It really depends how the cards are made an distributed. If the majority is Intel branded and they control distribution, customers stand a much better chance of getting them at msrp since AIB and distributors are out of the (price gauging) picture.

Tbh, I much prefer a higher but more realistic msrp vs deceitfully low msrp. I mean, if some customers and reviewers / the tech press want to be deceived, that‘s on them.

That said, I still believe OEM are Intel‘s main market, particularly for their first gen.
 
It really depends how the cards are made an distributed. If the majority is Intel branded and they control distribution, customers stand a much better chance of getting them at msrp since AIB and distributors are out of the (price gauging) picture.

Tbh, I much prefer a higher but more realistic msrp vs deceitfully low msrp. I mean, if some customers and reviewers / the tech press want to be deceived, that‘s on them.

That said, I still believe OEM are Intel‘s main market, particularly for their first gen.
You make good points, but if they are accurate (And it's fairly probably that they are) then the roads end on the same place: consumers probably won't get many of them whatsoever, just OEMs for the most part.

Which is better than what Nvidia and AMD are still doing using only distributors but well, not by much if at the end of the day you'd need to buy a full system and probably one that's intel only for both CPU and GPU (Because intel's gonna be intel about it and force it that way) so it's not going to take off for most consumers.
 
You make good points, but if they are accurate (And it's fairly probably that they are) then the roads end on the same place: consumers probably won't get many of them whatsoever, just OEMs for the most part.

Which is better than what Nvidia and AMD are still doing using only distributors but well, not by much if at the end of the day you'd need to buy a full system and probably one that's intel only for both CPU and GPU (Because intel's gonna be intel about it and force it that way) so it's not going to take off for most consumers.
It's going to take until late 2022 or mid 2023 before the supply situation improves product prices to a meaningful degree. No one is motivated to reduce prices until there are huge inventories of GPUs rotting on store shelves and in warehouses for weeks and months.
 
I've used this time to break from PC gaming - at least the high end stuff. I've upgraded my TV, home cinema and console, and I'm getting a new phone this month. My aging 2016 system still manages pretty well anyway, and the stars are aligning for late 2022/2023 being a far better time to revisit the PC gaming landscape. And you never know, it might include an Intel GPU! I really hope they're competitive enough to shake Nvidia's tree.
 
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