Intel's upcoming ARC graphics cards are poised to try and disrupt the market for current leaders NVIDIA and AMD. But there's one tech the GPUs won't be coming with, and this could be bad news for a lot of PC gamers.
That tech is a crypto mining limiter, which NVIDIA has been implementing for its RTX 3000 series graphics cards in order to stop miners from snatching up all stocks.
According to WCCFTech, Intel themselves confirmed this, saying that the first generation of Intel ARC graphics cards (codenamed "Alchemist") isn't prioritizing any features that specifically target miners.
According to VP & General Manager of Client Graphics Products and Solutions Roger Chandler, their focus will be just to put Intel ARC on shelves and make it available to everyone.
On the topic of mining, it's worth noting that this also translates to potential supply issues. As per Intel's Raja Koduri, the company cannot "promise" good supply.
They did, however, say that even NVIDIA and AMD can't promise that. As the third player in the consumer graphics industry, Koduri says Intel ARC could also experience some supply issues in today's high-demand market, as reported by Gadgets360.
Crypto Mining Limiters Are Facing Issues on Their Own
When NVIDIA first introduced these limiters on their RTX graphics cards, it didn't go well. They eventually did improve it, proving that their light hash rate (LHR) GPUs did cripple mining performance by at least half.
These limiters, however, didn't last long. Back in late May, a few miners did manage to crack the limiters of NVIDIA LHR GPUs. When before these cards could only perform at half the hash rate, they can now work at as much as 70%.
If Intel does try to put a mining limiter, they're likely to run into problems like what Team Green experienced.
Intel ARC Schedule
PC gamers who have been eagerly waiting for Intel ARC to drop will have to wait just a little bit longer, amidst reports that these cards could experience supply issues and not have mining limiters.
According to a industry leaker Hassan Mujtaba on Twitter, Intel ARC graphics cards are going to be delayed until Q2 of 2022:
Arc Alchemist DG2 for desktops is 100% Q2 now
— Hassan Mujtaba (@hms1193) October 6, 2021
These will be the desktop discrete cards, specifically. What this means is that Intel will be rolling out ARC rather slowly, focusing on mobile GPUs first sometime in the first quarter.
Bad News for PC Gamers?
Every PC gamer deprived of a graphics card will agree that supply issues are old news at this point.
Since Intel won't be focusing on keeping crypto miners' hands off their Alchemist GPUs, there's a good chance that miners are going to grab stocks as soon as they hit online and retail stores. From there, the law of supply and demand takes effect.
NVIDIA and AMD themselves have tried to fend off current market conditions for a while now, so it's not looking good for supplies of Intel ARC either.
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by RJ Pierce
