Intel Arc, the company’s first gaming GPUs, will debut in 2022

Intel chose a name for its high performance consumer graphics products: Intel Arc. The brand will cover the hardware and software aspects of its high-end graphics cards, as well as the services.

The first Arc GPUs, named Alchemist, will arrive in Q1 2022 for desktops and laptops as Intel looks to take on NVIDIA and AMD. Intel also revealed the code names for the following generations of hardware: Battlemage, Celestial, and Druid.

Alchemist GPUs will support hardware based ray tracing, mesh shading, variable rate shading, and Direct12 X Ultimate. Intel says they will also be capable of “artificial intelligence-based super sampling.” It certainly appears to be the company’s version of NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Super Sampling upscaling technology, which increases resolution while reducing pressure on GPUs.

Alchemist cards are based on the Xe-HPG microarchitecture, a mix of Xe LP, HP and HPC microarchitectures. Intel says Xe-HPG “will deliver scalability and compute efficiency with advanced graphics capabilities.” Intel’s Iris Xe dedicated graphics cards, which were primarily intended for pre-built laptops and desktops, are based on the Xe LP architecture. Intel says it will share more details on early Arc products later this year.

Intel also gave a quick look at Arc graphics in action. In a video, he showed games including Forza Horizon 4, Psychonauts 2, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (or PUBG: Battlegrounds, to be precise) and Exodus metro running on technology. And yes, it looks like GPUs can run the Remastered Crysis Trilogy.