Intel’s Raja Koduri Says His Focus Is 225 Watt GPUs With One Power Connector
by
Zak Killian
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Monday, December 12, 2022, 12:44 PM EDT
Did you check out our review of the new RDNA-3-based Radeons yet? Those GPUs are extremely high-powered in every sense, and that means that they're out of reach for the majority of the market. Intel's Raja Koduri apparently intends to target exactly that meaty middle, as he recently told a group of Indian tech journalists that his priority is the "core audience, with one power connector."
In an interview with Indian tech site Gadgets360, Koduri spoke rather candidly about Arc, its low-key launch in India, and where the brand is going in the future. We have to give props to Gadgets360 for asking some pretty good questions, and likewise, to his credit, Koduri was pretty game to answer them.
The GeForce RTX 4090 is absolutely massive, and equally power-thirsty.
Likely the most interesting questions of the bunch were about whether Intel would follow the market trend upward in terms of GPU power. In case you haven't been paying attention, GPUs have been getting bigger every generation, with the peak power draw of the biggest cards topping 450 watts.
Intel apparently won't be taking that track. Koduri says that his focus is "lower power" and complained that the high-end has "no limit right now." He has a point, and admits that halo SKUs are good for marketing, but then goes on to say that his priority is "getting that core audience, with one power connector. And that can get you up to 200-225W."
Intel's Arc A750 and A770 GPUs take two power connectors despite modest power use.
He'd be referring to a single eight-pin PCIe power connector, the traditional style. That plug can provide 150 watts while staying in spec, and in combination with the 75W peak from the PCIe slot itself, you're looking at a power budget of 225W. His own Arc A700-series GPUs don't quite hit that mark even though their power consumption is in that vague range; they come with a pair of power connectors onboard.
It's possible that the Arc A500-series GPUs that are expected to be released eventually might fall into that range, but Koduri could also be talking about the next generation of GPU hardware. We know precious little about Battlemage, the successor to Alchemist, but Koduri also says in the interview that his "top priority" is performance-per-watt.
The Radeon RX 7900 XTX isn't as fast as the RTX 4090, but it's still a $1000 GPU.
Koduri's statements make sense. Amidst all the hype surrounding the beastly Ada Lovelace GeForces and AMD's potent Navi 31, it's easy to forget that the slice of the computer market that can spend four figures on a gaming GPU is vanishingly small. If we were to be a little cheeky, we'd also point out that Intel doesn't really have anything to target the halo market at this time, so Koduri's focus being on exactly what Intel has to sell is sort of a given.
Regardless, if you look at the Steam hardware survey, the most popular GPUs are those that indeed fall within (or even far below) that 200-to-225-watt range. There's been a lot of grumbling from folks who are eager for a GPU upgrade but can't afford the top-end and are loathe to buy a last-gen product. If Intel can swoop in with its next-gen parts to provide a compelling product within the $300-400 price range in 2023, the company could have a major coup on its hands.
