We’ve been hearing all kinds of bad news about Intel’s new Arc GPUs where I’ve been reporting news that Intel would be canceling their Arc GPUs entirely because of how bad it’s gotten, and now Intel has reportedly lost the its first AIB.
The first AIB to stop production of custom Intel Arc GPUs has made history, becoming the first AIB to pull Intel’s new Arc GPUs before they actually started. The news comes from Igor Wallossek at Igor’s Lab, who reports that the first of the board’s major partners has “completely halted production of Intel cards,” which its sources say “due to quality issues.”
Igor reports: “At least one of the big board partners has even completely stopped the production of Intel cards (“due to quality problems”), as I was able to find out yesterday and today. […] Other board partners have at least already completely limited their marketing activities, and currently there doesn’t seem to be any real launch offensive from board partners in the time frame I mentioned between August 5 of 2022 and September 29, 2022. What will actually hit the market (as in retail) remains to be seen in the coming weeks. From the customer’s point of view, I can only hope for the best, I just lack faith.”
So all that “negativity” I’ve been accused of, which is me just doing my job – reporting the news, rumors and everything in between… seems to be true. Intel has been a mess for a while now, with miscommunication about its Arc GPUs, both inside and outside the company. Intel is telling some of its departments one thing while having a different external message.
We might see this particular AIB partner ramp up production of Intel Arc GPUs in the future, but I’m sure they’ll want to wait and see how Intel’s new Arc GPUs fare in the next 6-18 months. Game compatibility, driver issues, hardware and software issues, and a million other things I’m sure AIBs dread…warranties and returns will happen.
AIBs will take a big hit when this happens, and I’m sure Intel isn’t worried about their brand (it’s big enough, they’ll survive… but their GPU marketing image will be all but destroyed, all credibility). gone), but ultimately it will cost them in terms of consumer confidence, market confidence, and I’m sure many more ways that the company will experience throughout this year and into 2023.