ASRock Goes Low-Profile with New Arc A380 Graphics Card
by Anton Shilov on July 5, 2023 4:30 PM EST_678x452.jpg)
As Intel's slate of video card board partners has expanded over the last year, so has the variety in the ecosystem, as the newly minted partners set out to design their own unique products around Intel's fledgling GPU family. This, thankfully, is starting to include some underserved markets such as low profile vide cards, which have been left behind in the focus on bigger-and-better video cards. Which brings us to ASRock's latest Arc A380 graphics card, a new low-profile A380 design that brings Intel's entry-level discrete GPU to smaller systems.
As far as specifications are concerned, ASRock's Arc A380 Low Profile 6GB (A380 LP 6G) is a typical Arc A380 product that carries Intel's ACM-G11 GPU (1024 stream processors, 2.0 GHz) coupled with 6GB of GDDR6 memory attached via a 96-bit interface. Remarkably, the card maintains a TDP below 75W, which eliminates the need for an extra power connector. This makes it a potential upgrade for small form factor machines and older PCs that do not have a spare PCIe power connector.
It should be noted, however, that while the A380 LP 6G is a low-profile card, it is still a relatively powerful card, necessitating a dual-slot cooler. So while the card should work with the majority of compact PCs, it may still be a bit too big for the smallest of systems.
The low-profile design of the ASRock Arc A380 graphics card suggests that it is not necessarily targeting even entry-level gaming machines. Instead, it appears to be a reasonable choice for minimalist office PCs and home theater PCs (HTPCs). Speaking of office PCs, ASRock's Arc A380 Low Profile 6GB graphics card only has two display outputs: one DisplayPort 2.0 and one HDMI 2.0b. This characteristic sets a constraint for applications that require more than two monitors. Of course, far not all office PCs need three or more displays, but ASRock's board will be unusable for things like video walls that are typically driven by compact PCs.
ASRock's low-profile Arc card should be available at retail soon. Though at least for the moment, the company is not listing a price for the pint-sized product.
Source: ASRock
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Kevin G - Wednesday, July 5, 2023 - link
This could still support more than two displays via a DP MST hub. With DP 1.4, 8K30 is possible which could be broken down to four 4K30 displays that come off of the MST hub or daisy chained. With DP 2.0, four 8K60 displays are possible using DSC over a single cable. Conceptually this can be broken down to sixteen 4k60 displays. This should cover most video wall needs but does require the MST hub(s). The one restriction is that how many displays can be driven directly off of the video card, which I think is four for Intel GPUs. This can be by passed as several MST hubs leveraging identical displays can appear as a unified surface and thus count as one display for this purpose.meacupla - Thursday, July 6, 2023 - link
I think they could have added in 2x USB-C alt mode DP + HDMI for 3 displays.or 4x mini-DP
or 4x USB-C alt mode DP.
USB-C to DP cables, and DP to HDMI adapter cables are easy to find, and cheap.
DanNeely - Thursday, July 6, 2023 - link
With a dual slot cooler there's no excuse for not having a second row of video outputs.meacupla - Friday, July 7, 2023 - link
The excuse is LP GPUs just don't get special treatment, and this is a standard PC industry configuration.I am surprised this one even ships with the LP bracket, because manufacturers usually don't include it. If it shipped with both LP and regular brackets, it's already 90% ahead of what everyone else does.
The best you will see is something like 4x mini-DP on the same row, and those would be typically found on a Quadro
PeachNCream - Wednesday, July 5, 2023 - link
Eh, integrated graphics are more than enough for nearly everything including gaming if you pick your games with any amount of thought and aren't hung up on playing current popular titles. Even a relatively efficient dGPU like this is vast overkill for mundane compute tasks and fairly excessive for gaming and entertainment.nandnandnand - Wednesday, July 5, 2023 - link
The Cezanne iGPU was respectable, but not powerful. Rembrandt, Phoenix, et al. have yet to appear on AM5. Getting a mini PC with a mobile chip in it is the only option for that next level of iGPU performance.The A380 looked good in theory. Has all the decode/encode, 6 GB of VRAM instead of 4 GB, sips power. But the performance is around an RX 6400, weaker than the 6500 XT and Phoenix's 780M.
If you want to insist that Cezanne 5600G/5700G performance is enough or that people should get a Rembrandt/Phoenix mini PC, ok I guess.
PeachNCream - Thursday, July 6, 2023 - link
I wasn't thinking Cezanne at all. More like whatever Intel was hocking in the form of HD 620 type stuff. At the moment, I use a Pentium n3700 which IIRC is one generation newer than Bay Trail so 2015-ish low power processor with 16EUs clocked at up to 700 MHz. It's good enough, but again, I'm not an idiot about picking what sorts of games I want to play. A newer platform would be nice like the Pentium n5000 or n6000, but I'm not really feeling the pinch beacuse the Dell Latitude 3160 the CPU sits in is sufficient for pretty much everything I do to stay amused and I don't feel like throwing away $150 on an ebay laptop to replace it just yet.nandnandnand - Thursday, July 6, 2023 - link
I do use HD530 graphics constantly now and it's fine for what I do with it and old games like Skyrim. Phoenix and Strix Point are getting closer to the magic 1080p60 mark in new games, and that's something worth celebrating because that's a good point at which dGPUs can be kicked to the curb.meacupla - Wednesday, July 5, 2023 - link
The only use case I see for this is adding av1 decode to an older cpu.it's slower than a gtx1650 or rx6400 for gaming
Kevin G - Thursday, July 6, 2023 - link
The low profile, low power nature of this card also means that it is good choice to add for servers that do video transcoding. Granted it is a niche application but it exists.