Intel’s Arc Battlemage GPUs, the second-gen products which will be the successor to its incoming Arc Alchemist graphics cards, will take on AMD and Nvidia at the high-end around mid-2023, according to the rumor mill.
This comes from YouTuber Moore’s Law Is Dead (MLID) whose sources (apparently with good track records – but take all this with lots of skepticism as ever) claim that Intel is becoming increasingly confident in its upcoming graphics cards. Indeed, the contention is that Intel is ‘very bullish’ no less, and that 2023 will be the ‘big year’ for Arc in terms of Battlemage really taking its rivals to task.
The theory is that when they come out around mid-2023, Battlemage graphics cards will beat Nvidia’s next-gen Lovelace products (which should arrive later in 2022). As for AMD, apparently the company isn’t really on the radar for Intel, and won’t be until Team Red can prove that it can crank out GPUs in quantities to rival Nvidia’s production.
The YouTuber also touches on Intel’s CPUs, saying sources are indicating that Team Blue expects Meteor Lake to pretty much leave AMD’s Ryzen chips in the dust, at least when it comes to laptop processors anyway.
Furthermore, MLID contends that 14th-gen processors will be out less than a year after Raptor Lake, the 13th-gen chips for 2022, which are expected to be a simple refresh of Alder Lake (whereas Meteor Lake is a whole new ballgame on 7nm).
Analysis: Alchemy with the drivers, and then a battle at the high-end
This certainly stokes the hype machine for Intel’s incoming graphics cards, and it’s very interesting to get a glimpse of Team Blue’s purported longer-term ambitions with Battlemage in 2023.
Before we get there, though, we obviously have Alchemist graphics cards coming potentially in March or April 2022. MLID makes it clear that Intel’s apparent focus for Alchemist or DG2 cards (Battlemage will be DG3) is the refinement of drivers, and getting that spot-on. This is something we’ve talked about here on TechRadar in the past, in terms of it being a crucial piece of the puzzle (as well as getting the hardware itself right, of course).
The other key for Arc Alchemist will be pricing, and we’re hopeful that Intel may go for the undercutting route as a way to break into the current GPU duopoly, bringing some much-needed more competitive pricing into play. That said, even having more cards available to buy will be a blessed relief in a time where GPU pricing has shot through the roof in a frankly ridiculous manner, and even low-end cards are priced at silly levels.
We can expect some interesting budget offerings from Alchemist, fortunately, and also from Nvidia – hopefully with an RTX 3050 desktop graphics card set to be unleashed in January, and maybe unveiled at CES 2022 – plus AMD is rumored to have its wallet-friendly RX 6500 XT ready to launch next month.
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Via Wccftech
