Intel has created an incentive package to persuade people to buy pre-built PCs with an Arc Alchemist graphics card plus an Alder Lake CPU, consisting of a bunch of games and more serious software.
The all-Intel machines come with $190 (about £165, AU$280) worth of PC games (and game content in one case) plus a choice of three out of five featured apps which, if you select the most expensive products, adds up to $284 (around £250, AU$420). This is all based on Intel’s calculation of the average retail price.
This offer or ‘Intel Software Advantage Program (opens in a new tab)‘ was spotted by @momomo_us on Twitter (via VideoCardz (opens in a new tab)), and pertains to specific PCs with Arc A5 or A7 graphics cards coupled with Alder Lake Core i5, i7, or i9 processors (both desktops and laptops are included).
Intel Software Advantage ProgramIntel Arc 5/7 System Packagehttps://t.co/jG5vIRMKAv pic.twitter.com/I0BiYXtwL5September 6, 2022
The game pack consists of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, Gotham Knights, and in-game content for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt.
On the software front, you can select three of the following five: PowerDirector 365, D5 Render, Magix Video Pro X14, Topaz Gigapixel AI, or XSplit Premium Suite.
As mentioned, with the most expensive apps from the latter group picked, you’re looking at a bundle worth $474 (about £410, AU$705), or with the cheapest software picked, $380 (about £330, AU$565). All of these products are delivered as digital downloads.
The offer is active now, or rather, when the A5 and A7 graphics cards come out; we expect the higher-end A7 models, namely the A770 and A750, to arrive very soon, Intel recently told us. Mind you, the games haven’t been released yet either, and the three titles on offer won’t be out until next month.
The promotion itself lasts until the end of 2022, at which point you must claim your code to get your download.
Analysis: Give it away, already…
Whichever software options you choose here, this is a pretty big freebie, with some nifty freebies available. And unsurprisingly, the games were chosen due to their Arc GPU features, which feature XeSS support that enables frame rate acceleration via Intel’s rival DLSS, and we already know that Team Blue has implemented the ray tracing for Gotham Knights. (Recently, Intel has also been stoking the hype around XeSS, and it sounds pretty impressive at first glance.)
Clearly, Intel is serious about making its high-end Arc Alchemist graphics cards more appealing given that they won’t be remotely able to compete with AMD and Nvidia’s top dogs, and that’s before Team’s next-gen GPUs arrive. Red and Green. that won’t be too long now.
Intel has indicated that while the drivers may increase Arc’s performance somewhat over time, it won’t be by much, so the main route the chip giant will take to compete with established rivals in the world of graphics cards. is to do it in pricing. And obviously part of that, beyond lowering MSRPs, will be value packs like this, although we have to remember that this isn’t a pure GPU pack, but one that comes with a full PC (an entirely more expensive proposition). , of course).
The problem with the bundle scene is that right now AMD and Nvidia are offering some pretty cool bundles with discrete graphics cards, so Intel has a lot of work to do to compete. (For example, Nvidia’s recent ‘face your demons’ bundle includes Doom Eternal, plus two expansions for the shooter, and Ghostwire: Tokyo.)
In some respects, the problem for Intel on the value front is that it’s getting into an environment where Nvidia, in particular, needs to swap out current-gen RTX 3000 GPUs before the next-gen launch, and it’s expected that the price-cutting action picks up speed. as soon as this month, really. Still, whatever the case may be, we’re not going to argue with big freebies or steep price drops, regardless of where they come from: the more the better, quite simply.
