INTEL’S ARC GRAPHICS card hasn’t made much of a splash, with AMD and Nvidia owning top-level gaming. However, mid-range cards are where the majority of sales are made and, here, Arc Alchemy cards are making an appearance. Most cards we’ve seen are Intel-branded, but Gigabyte has now joined the party, selling low-end branded Arc cards in selected markets, with presumably the A750 and A770 cards to follow. One weakness of the Alchemist cards has been the underdeveloped and buggy driver, but the latest version addresses the terrible performance under DirectX 9. The driver now has native DirectX 9 support, although only for selected games (currently 13 titles). It can give a dramatic boost too, with a frame rate that doubles in some cases. Arc has been slow to market, but Intel has kept one promise it made—it is a cost-effective option.