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No, you won’t need a Core 10th Gen CPU or newer for Intel Arc graphics cardsDemystifying Intel’s Arc quick start guide
Demystifying Intel’s Arc quick start guide
Last week Intel published a “quick start guide” for their upcomingArc A-series graphics cards, including a “Supported Hardware Configurations” section that only specifically namechecked their own 10th, 11th and 12th Gen Core CPUs. Cue a heady mix of confusion and perturbation – surely Intel weren’t suggesting that Arc GPUs would only function when paired with an Intel CPU, and a relatively new one at that?
No, they weren’t, though the guide’s vague wording isn’t doing it – and worse, potential Arc users – any favours. Parts of the guide appear to conflate support forResizable BARwith support for the Arc A-series in general, which further muddies things as Resizable BAR works on AMD Ryzen chips as well as those three Core CPU generations. I asked Intel directly for clarification and essentially, Arc GPUs won’t have such super specific CPU requirements just to run - though they’ll apparently perform better in systems that do support Resizable BAR.
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While Resizable BAR specifically won’t work on Intel 9th-gen chips and older, it’s easy to read this as suggesting the newer chips are also the only confirmed compatible chips for Arc graphics in general. That would be strange, especially since on Nvidia GeForce GPUs, Resizable BAR works with AMD CPUs as well. AMD simply call the same tech Smart Access Memory (SAM) instead.
The statement I received from Intel is much clearer, at least in the sense that it confirms Arc graphics can be used without Resizable BAR, and thus with older Intel CPUs; they just might not run as fast.
The Intel Arc A380 has gone on sale in China, though we haven’t seen any performance reviews for it yet.
Intel also confirmed that AMD Ryzen chips should work fine with SAM enabled: “Resizable BAR is the industry generic name, whereas Smart Access Memory is AMD’s naming for the feature. If you are using Intel Arc A-series Graphics products on an AMD system, simply ensure that Smart Access Memory has been enabled. Some manufacturers may vary in naming the option in the system’s firmware configuration page.”
So there you have it: older chips should work with Arc, Intel just reckon that Resizable BAR makes enough of a performance difference that it’s best pair with a 10th Gen Core CPU or newer (or a newer Ryzen chip, but then it’s not surprising Intel’s don’t want to list competitors’ processors on their own site).
