Intel: Budget Savior?
Is Intel the answer to our sub-$1,000 Budget Build problem?
IN THE COMMENTS SECTION of MaximumPC (see pages 94-95), the most hotly contested issue of the last few months has been our Budget Builds in the Blueprints section (page 96). These builds started out costing less than $1,000, but then over the last year, they crept upwards as graphics card prices commanded ever-greater premiums. We got some feedback on this that then sparked a debate about what a budget build should be in 2023—some readers suggested we drop the GPUs and make them workmachines only, while others said it was important that they were capable of playing games at 1080p. We decided to go with the latter option, and Sam, who curates the build each month, got the prices back down to three figures by using older GPUs which had become cheaper over time.
This month’s cover build has me thinking that we might have found close to a perfect budget build, using a GPU from a company I never expected. But as Sam has shown us on page 16, the budget-friendly pairing of the Core i5-13400 CPU and A750 Arc GPU offers significant current-gen power in a case that has loads of room to grow, and all at a price that’s comfortably within three figures.
I still think that for the majority of our readers, AMD and Nvidia are the ways to go when it comes to GPUs. Intel’s Arc series gets the job done for those on a budget, but they’re not the cards for ray-traced, highresolution gaming. But as Jarred’s feature in our April 2023 issue highlighted, Intel has been putting in the work to improve its graphic card drivers to deliver results, while as his feature in this issue on page 50 shows, the video encoding smarts of these cards make them excellent choices for live streamers and video editors.
I also personally met Intel recently, and after a rocky start, there seems to be a growing feeling of confidence that they’re on the right track when it comes to capturing the budget market. With AMD and Nvidia increasingly obsessed with the $899+ market, there will be plenty of people who will welcome Intel’s sub$349 cards with open arms.