Intel’s Arc GPUs to compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

Intel has been working for years to enter the high-end graphics card market to compete with Nvidia and AMD, and today those efforts have a name: Intel Arc (not to be confused with Intel Ark, the site you go to. when you need help with Intel’s indecipherable processor model numbers). The first Arc products will be released in “Q1 2022” and will be based on a GPU named “Alchemist”, a new, more memorable codename for a GPU previously known as “DG2”.

The first Arc cards will be a sort of follow-up to DG1 – a card released only for system builders – that functions a lot like the GDDR5 version of Nvidia’s aging, low-end GeForce GTX 1030. We don’t have datasheets for any of the Alchemist-based Arc cards as of yet, but Intel’s trailer showed confirmed support for modern GPU features like real-time ray tracing. and “AI Accelerated Super Sampling” that will rival DLSS scaling technologies from Nvidia and FidelityFX from AMD. The trailer also showed Arc Silicon running real games (albeit a bit older) like Forza Horizon 4 and Exodus metro.

To demonstrate its commitment to the discrete GPU market, Intel has announced several other GPU code names that will succeed Alchemist in the coming years, including “Battlemage”, “Celestial” and “Druid” (note both the order alphabetical and high-fantasy theme).

Arc will represent Intel’s first serious run in the gaming GPU market, but the company is not starting from scratch. The company has decades of experience writing and updating graphics drivers, and it has a habit of releasing both “stable” driver packages and beta drivers with improvements for specific games. , much like AMD and Nvidia already do. And while it doesn’t blow the doors of AMD’s integrated GPUs into its Ryzen APUs, the Intel Iris Xe graphics in 11th gen Core laptops can actually run many games at 1080p or 720p.

We don’t know anything about the performance, pricing, or availability of Arc cards at this time, but if the current GPU shortage continues through early 2022, this will represent a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Intel, with gamers desperate to put the money down. hand over it. all Reasonably competent GPUs will be more inclined to try their luck on an Intel card than they otherwise would be. Even relatively lackluster cards like Nvidia’s RTX 3060 and AMD’s 6600 XT have quickly sold out in today’s market, so until Alchemist sets your computer on fire, it has a reasonable chance of success.