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It's simultaneously a shocking shakeup of the PC chip triumvirate (AMD must be fuming), a much-needed lifeline for struggling Intel, and a recipe for a potentially exciting future - the world's foremost graphics pioneer joining forces with the company formerly known as Chipzilla. Imagine the possibilities!
But I also have to ask myself at the same time: What does this mean for the future of Arc, Intel's own in-house graphics project?
Intel Arc's short history shows promise…
Arc is still in its infancy. Intel famously canceled its early "Larrabee" graphics architecture in the 2000s, which became a liability after the rise of Bitcoin and AI demonstrated the powerful potential of GPUs. Intel realized it missed the boat and rushed - slowly, at times - to orchestrate both the Arc brand and the Xe graphics architecture girding it.
The first Arc graphics cards launched in just October 2022, delivering great value for its price despite an onslaught of annoying bugs. Intel diligently fixed those bugs over time, and by the time the second-gen Arc B580 launched in late 2024, we called
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Right now, you can get this RTX-powered Lenovo LOQ 15IRX10 for just $1,074.99 at Best Buy, which is a hefty $225 discount for a pretty decent portable gaming machine. That 15.6-inch display sports a gorgeous IPS panel at a 1920×1080 resolution and with 144Hz of refresh, so it'll look great whether you're stuck reading a massive document or plowing through the latest games in your Steam library.
Performance-wise, this laptop is well-equipped to handle your daily workload and creative hobbies. It runs on a 13th-gen Intel Core i7-13650HX processor and 16GB of DDR5 RAM, which is enough to gracefully handle Windows 11 without tripping. Want more RAM? No problem. This laptop is user-upgradeable, so you can stick in another module and boost it up to 32GB. The 512GB SSD is a letdown, but shouldn't be an issue if you can supplement with a large external drive.
But the kicker here is the RTX 5060 graphics card that unlocks access to Nvidia's latest gaming features, including DLSS 4. It'll run your games at high enough frame rates to take advantage of that 144Hz screen, and it'll serve you well for years to come. You can attach an external display via HDMI or USB-C video, and you also get three USB-A ports, an Ethernet port, and a 3.5mm audio jack
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The deal between the chipmakers, whose fortunes have diverged sharply, includes plans to collaborate on technology to power artificial intelligence.
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