Gigabyte Registers 5 Custom Intel Arc GPU Models With the EEC

While Intel’s Arc graphics cards are now officially here, truth be told, you’d be hard-pushed to notice it. Despite ‘releasing’ on October 12th, at the time of writing, I can only find one UK-based retailer currently listing them as available to purchase. And even then, with a £399 price tag (Arc 770) for something that only just manages to outperform the Nvidia 3060, it’s certainly quite an outlay unless you’re one of the relatively few who take an active interest when it comes to moderate prestige/unique (and dare I say collectable?) graphics cards.

What will, of course, help in terms of retail price tags is when custom AIB models finally start arriving. For the moment though, there are only two official partners, ASRock and GUNNIR. And neither of them seems to be going full-tilt to bring Intel Arc GPUs en-masse to retailers although treating it as a tentative experiment rather than an outright release.

Following a report via Videocardz, however, following new EEC listings being submitted, Gigabyte may be set to become the third official Intel Arc AIB partner as five GPU models have officially been registered on their website.

Gigabyte to Join the Intel Arc Party?

While the listing is certainly interesting, the news isn’t that overly exciting at the moment (in terms of performance) as the only GPUs noted in the registration include the A380 and A310. So yeah, pretty much the bottom rung of the Intel Arc performance ladder.

• Gigabyte Arc A380 Gaming OC 6GB (GV-IA380GAMING OC-6GD)
• Gigabyte Arc A380 Gaming 6GB (GV-IA380GAMING-6GD)
• Gigabyte Arc A380 WindForce OC 6GB (GV-IA380WF2OC-6GD)
• Gigabyte Arc A380 WindForce 6GB (GV-IA380WF2-6GD)
• Gigabyte Arc A310 WindForce 4GB (GV-IA310WF2-4GD)

With this in mind, therefore, it could be likely that these GPUs (presuming that they are actually released – which an EEC registration never guarantees) might be primarily set to head to pre-build system partners as an affordable graphics solution rather than receiving an actual mainstream retail release. – On the other hand, though, it would be unusual for Gigabyte to produce so many variants if this was their intended location.

So who knows, maybe you will be able to buy a Gigabyte Arc graphics card at some point in the next few months. – Let’s be honest though, while everyone has to start somewhere, I think most might’ve hoped that this was something more along the lines of the A750 or A770. You know, something which can actually offer some entry-level competition.

What do you think though? – Let us know in the comments!