You won’t be able to build a PC with Intel’s Arc graphics cards any time soon

It’s safe to say that Intel’s entry into the discrete graphics market, potentially busting decades of Nvidia-AMD duopoly, is highly anticipated. But if you live outside of China, you’ll be anticipating it for a bit longer. A new blog post from Intel drops the shocking news that the new Arc desktop GPUs will launch first in China with a worldwide rollout to follow. This will allow the company to technically hold to its “Q2” timeframe, but the rest of us will be waiting until summer (or later) to get our hands on the new hardware.

The news comes in a question-and-answer blog post on Intel’s community portal, spotted by VideoCardz.com. Vice President for the Visual Compute Group Lisa Pearce explains that, targeting the entry-level discrete graphics market, Arc GPUs will be made available to China-based OEMs and system builders at the end of the second quarter. Standard retail sales will follow, but again, limited to China only. The A3 entry-level cards (presumably comparable to something like a GeForce XX50) will be on offer to start.

According to the blog post, higher-end Arc A5 and A7 cards will begin rolling out “later this summer” to OEMs and system builders worldwide. Only after that will the first Arc GPUs be sold directly to consumers outside of China. Charitably, that means it could be August — or later — before we see Intel cards on store shelves to compete with Nvidia and AMD.

In the meantime Arc graphics cards are beginning to trickle out in laptops, thankfully not limited to the Chinese market. PCWorld has an exclusive benchmark of the Arc A370M, which beats out integrated graphics by a healthy margin and competes with the discrete RTX 3050 and RX 6600M laptop cards.

Further Intel Arc reading:

Intel’s long-anticipated Arc GPUs arrive in laptops, loaded with enticing featuresMeet Xe HPG, the beating heart inside Intel’s first graphics cardsCan Intel Arc shake up the depressingly bleak state of graphics cards?Here’s your first look at Intel’s Arc Limited Edition graphics cardTested: Arc A370M, Intel’s first discrete GPU to seriously battle Nvidia and AMD https://www.pcworld.com/article/699556/intels-arc-desktop-gpus-wont-be-available-in-the-us-at-launch.html