Fancy the new Intel Arc GPUs? You might need a 10th Gen or newer Intel processor

Intel had officially launched their Intel Arc lineup of graphics cards earlier this year, though you might not have realised. Only the mobile lineup were revealed, while their desktop cards remain missing, with only their entry level Arc A380 appearing in China for now.

However, from the looks of things, even if they were made available you might want to check if your computer can actually use it. An Intel Arc quick start guide has appeared on their support page, and it seems as though you’ll need to use at least 10th Gen Intel Core processors or newer to use an Intel Arc graphics card, with no mention of 9th Gen Intel Core processors and older being supported for now.

The issue here seems to be the need for Resizable BAR support. Resizable BAR is a feature that allows the CPU to access the entire graphics frame buffer. Essentially, the graphics card will need to ask the CPU for the assets it needs to load into your video game, such as textures and shaders. Traditionally the CPU will only give the GPU these assets in 256MB chunks of data. Resizable BAR—along with the AMD variant Smart Access Memory—in turn allows the CPU to send more data to the GPU rather than tiny chunks of data.

Intel Arc apparently will require Resizable BAR support on both your CPU and your motherboard to work properly in your system. Resizable BAR was only introduced onto 10th Gen Intel Core processors, which perhaps explains the limitations. Curiously, while no AMD Ryzen CPUs were explicitly listed as supported by Intel Arc, it does say that additional platforms with Smart Access Memory enabled may be able to support Intel Arc graphics cards.

It’s perhaps an odd move to require Resizable BAR/Smart Access Memory outright to use Intel Arc graphics cards, as this severely limits the systems that can use Intel Arc graphics cards. If you were using a 9th Gen Intel Core CPU for instance and wanted to upgrade to an Intel Arc GPU, you may be out of luck here. AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 graphics cards also launched with the Smart Access Memory feature, but didn’t require it to work with your system.

For what it’s worth, the Intel support page does mention that support for more platforms will be added at a later time so there could still be a chance that your older but capable PCs will be able to use an Intel Arc graphics card. And in any case, it’s not like you can buy one for yourself now anyway.

[ SOURCE 2 ]