Intel Arc Alchemist may be a lot cheaper than we thought | Digital Trends

Intel is now offering alternate prizes to the winners of its Xe-HPG Scavenger Hunt, and although this might seem completely unrelated, it actually gives us a clue about the pricing of Arc Alchemist GPUs.

The winners were given the chance to pick one of two Intel Alder Lake processors to act as a substitute for the promised Intel Arc prize. Examining the prices of these processors might be the key to figuring out just how much Intel Arc might cost when it finally arrives.

If all of this seems a little bit convoluted, allow us to explain. Intel held an Xe-HPG Scavenger Hunt that sent many people on a quest to win an Intel Arc Alchemist graphics card. The event started almost a year and a half ago, in March 2021, and the 300 winners have since been chosen. It should come as no surprise that they are yet to receive their prizes — if 300 Intel Arc GPUs suddenly appeared in the hands of various enthusiasts, we’d certainly hear about it. Intel Arc still hasn’t launched globally, so the winners have had to wait for their rewards.

The prizes include Arc A7-series graphics cards, with the grand prize being the flagship A770, followed by the A750. While these are expected to hopefully hit the market within the next month or two, Intel is now offering the winners of the scavenger hunt the opportunity to pick an alternate prize in the form of an Intel Alder Lake CPU.

VideoCardz shared an email received by one of the winners, detailing the prizes that can be picked out as an alternative. Those who were eligible for the grand prize were offered an Intel Core i7-12700K processor, while those who won the first prize could pick up an Intel Core i5-12600K.

The prizes act as a complete replacement, so those who give up on waiting for Intel Arc and get a processor instead will not be allowed to get a GPU later on. To that end, Intel added an interesting disclaimer in the email: “The overall total value of the alternate prize package, including hardware prizing and non-hardware prizing, will be of equivalent value to the original prize package.”

This is where it gets exciting — this is the best indicator of the pricing for Intel Arc that we have received thus far, and if it checks out, it’s certainly good news for Intel enthusiasts. The Core i7-12700K CPU has an MSRP of $409 while the Core i5-12600K was priced at $289. Their current prices are even better, with the Core i7-12700K on Amazon and the Core i5-12600K .

Despite the discounts, it’s the MSRP that we have to compare to — but even then, this implies that the Arc A770 would be a price equivalent to the Core i7-12700K. Regardless of what one might think about the alleged performance of Intel Arc, a GPU with 16GB of memory priced at around $400 is going to be a good deal. As per usual, take all of this with a bit of skepticism — we can only speculate until Intel speaks up on the matter.

If this proves to be true, it seems that Intel plans to follow through on its promise to make the Arc Alchemist compete on price as opposed to performance. This is a good strategy, and perhaps the only one that makes sense, because AMD and Nvidia are just about to launch their next-gen GPUs that Intel won’t be able to keep up with. However, if it can keep the pricing as reasonable as this and keep trying to optimize the drivers, Intel Arc might turn out to be a decent budget option for non-demanding gamers.

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