Arc Alchemist on laptops: between delays and communication problems at Intel

Written by Guillaume
Publication date: {{ dayjs(1649865633*1000).local().format("L").toString()}}
Follow us
This article is an automatic translation

Despite the return of Intel to the forefront with Alder Lake, the communication of the American giant still knows some couacs.

Announced for years, the arrival of Intel on the market of dedicated graphics card to compete with AMD and NVIDIA is still delayed. After multiple presentations organized in recent months to detail almost every component of its strategy, the American company took care, on March 30, to dot the i's and cross the t's witha rather comprehensive press event... even if it focused only on solutions for laptops for video game enthusiasts. Indeed, there was nothing for graphics cards for tower PCs.

Intel was very clear at the conference that a first batch of Arc Alchemist graphics solutions - the A350M and A370M - would be available "right away". So there was no question of waiting even two weeks to discover in stores at least some of the machines of its many partners such as Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo or Samsung. However, since this famous March 30, enthusiasts have not seen anything coming yet and, more embarrassing, no retailer is setting up pre-orders, reservation offers or giving any indication of the real availability of the machines.

Intel's communication machine seems to have missed the mark, but this is really only the beginning of the "worries". Indeed, following the remarks of many users, Intel's customer service was keen to react promptly, probably a little too much. We have learned that Arc Alchemist-based laptops will not be available until the end of the second quarter of 2022. A quarter that runs from April to June and, as we are not born of the last rain, we know that on this kind of range, we should rather take the most pessimistic estimate: the first machines would not arrive before next June. About two and a half months after this March 30 "launch".

Things don't stop there, however, and Intel's latest clarification underlines the sort of vagueness that surrounds the launch of Arc Alchemist. Indeed, on Twitter, Intel explains that it " had bad information: Samsung systems with Intel Arc graphics are available in South Korea and will then expand to other regions. The American specifies that other suppliers will then follow the movement and thus joins the estimate of a large-scale availability around June 2022. However, there has never been any mention of a South Korean "exclusivity" of this product line.