The Full Nerd Special Episode: Intel stops by to talk (and play) Arc graphics cards

In this special episode of The Full Nerd, Gordon Ung, Brad Chacos and Adam Patrick Murray are joined by Intel’s Tom Petersen and Ryan Shrout who stopped by to get geeky about the company’s debut Arc graphics cards—and even let us give the Arc A770 some hands-on play time.

After what could kindly only be called an ugly AF launch of the first low-end Arc GPUs in China, Petersen and Shrout stopped by the Full Nerd set for a frank and honest talk. Intel even let us install an Arc A770 retail card in a system to let us play Borderlands 3 at a very decent 90 to 100 frames a second at 1440p High settings. Yes, we’ve finally played a game on an Intel Arc discrete desktop card!

Our wide-ranging interview covers the reason why PCIe Resizable BAR is a must-have feature for Arc and why most A770 cards will have 8GB of GDDR6 but the Intel Limited Edition comes with 16GB. Petersen and Shrout also touch on pricing, explain ground-breaking new Intel features like Smooth Sync, and wade into whether Intel’s XeSS can compete with Nvidia’s DLSS 2.0 or not. Intel’s dynamic duo also tell us how you should set up your motherboard to run Arc and everything about the hardware and software powering Arc.

Finally, in a sign of the position Intel is taking with its first serious attempt at discrete graphics in decades, we ask Intel how it can possibly convince gamers and PC enthusiasts to recommend Arc over GeForce and Radeon right now. The answer may shock you.

You can witness the full two hour discussion over on Twitch, or listen to it on Megaphone.fm if you prefer the audio alone. 

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Have a PC- or gaming-related question? Email thefullnerd@pcworld.com and we’ll try to answer it in the next episode. You can also join the PC-related discussions and ask us questions on The Full Nerd’s Discord server. Finally, be sure to follow PCWorld on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch to watch future episodes live and pick our brains in real time!