In a nutshell: Intel's ongoing competition to win Xe Arc GPUs, merchandise, and gift cards is about to enter its second phase. In their updated terms and conditions, Intel hints at the prices and release date for two of their upcoming high-end GPUs.

Phase one of Intel's competition was a little lackluster, but phase two promises to up the ante. A prize pool of $430,000 will be shared among 3,300 winners and entry is free.

Intel is offering up a "premium" Arc GPU, some merchandise, and six months of Xbox Game Pass to one hundred grand prize winners. They're valuing the prize at $900, so if you subtract $60 for the pass and $50-100 for the merchandise, you're left with a GPU that costs between $740 and $790.

First-place is offered to the next 200 winners. It includes a "performance" GPU, some merchandise, and three months of Xbox Game Pass. It's valued at $700. Subtracting $30 for the game pass, and $50-100 for the merchandise, and the GPU is worth $570 to $620.

If we pretend that the GPUs will be sold at MSRP, then both GPUs' price ranges sound quite reasonable. The top model is priced a touch above the RTX 3080 while its sibling costs about the same as the RTX 3070 Ti. Leaks suggest they'll perform similarly to their Nvidia counterparts.

Intel's flagship gaming GPU is sampling now.

Second and third place prizes are $100 and $50 gift cards, respectively, that can be redeemed when purchasing an Intel GPU from one of their partners. There are 1,000 second-place prizes and 2,000 third-place prizes up for grabs.

Intel also explains how the competition works on the terms and conditions page. There's a "clue period" that begins at 9 am PT on October 27, 2021 and ends at 11:59 pm on January 31, 2022. During the period, 10 Twitter accounts affiliated with Intel will post 10 clues.

Each clue will be a puzzle that needs solving. Once you've solved a puzzle you can submit the solution on Intel's page, and you'll receive 5,000 points if you're first to do so, 4,999 points if you're the second, and so on.

At the end of the period, competitors will be ranked based on the number of points they have and the prizes will be divvied up accordingly. Given that the prizes are all GPU-related, it's likely that the end of the period will coincide with their release – in other words, mark February 1, 2022 in the calendar.

Image credit: Christian Wiediger