[3][4][5] Intel missed their initial Q2 2022 release target, with most discrete Arc GPUs not launching until October 2022.

[11] Each generation of Arc is named after character classes sorted by each letter of the Latin alphabet in ascending order.

Alchemist supports hardware-based ray tracing, XeSS or supersampling based on neural networks (similar to Nvidia's DLSS and AMD's FSR), and DirectX 12 Ultimate.

AV1 fixed-function hardware encoder is included in Alchemist GPUs as part of the Intel Quick Sync Video core.

[17] Arc Alchemist does not support SR-IOV[18] or Direct3D 9 natively, instead falling back on the D3D9On12 wrapper which translates Direct3D 9 calls to their Direct3D 12 equivalents.

[21] Display connections: DisplayPort 2.0 (40 Gbit/s bandwidth) and HDMI 2.1 Battlemage (Xe2) is the second-generation Xe architecture that debuted with its low power variant in Lunar Lake mobile processors that released in September 2024.

[34][35][36] Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger also blamed driver problems as a reason for Arc's delayed launch.

[41] As a result, Alchemist GPUs perform noticeably worse than competing Nvidia and AMD GPUs in software that can only use these older APIs, including multiple DirectX 9-based esports games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends and StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty.

[45] Intel Arc requires a UEFI BIOS with resizable BAR support for optimal performance.