Rumor mill: Intel has remained tight-lipped about its plans for next-generation Battlemage graphics playing cards thus far, however they’re definitely hoping to keep away from the a number of delays that plagued the launch of the Alchemist lineup in 2022. Latest leaks and reviews point out that the corporate needs to start shipments earlier than the tip of this yr.
Sources on the 2024 Embedded World Convention instructed ComputerBase that Intel hopes to introduce its second-generation devoted graphics playing cards – codenamed Battlemage – earlier than Black Friday this yr. The brand new GPUs may emerge in November, offered the corporate meets its timetable.
A leaked inside roadmap and a public presentation slide from final yr indicated that Intel slated Battlemage for launch someday in 2024. The report from Embedded World means that Chipzilla needs to beat the vacation buying season, throughout which it’ll seemingly compete towards new graphics playing cards from Nvidia and AMD.
Nonetheless, Intel has to show it may preserve its roadmap, which it missed when launching the Alchemist collection in 2022. The corporate initially deliberate to realize broad availability early that yr. As a substitute, it solely managed a sluggish rollout in China earlier than delivery the Arc A750 and A770 to different international locations that October.
The delays put Alchemist behind the efficiency curve in comparison with its contemporaries – Nvidia’s RTX 4000 collection and AMD’s Radeon RX 7000 lineup. Inefficient drivers have additionally been a persistent drawback for Intel, however quite a few software program updates have dramatically improved DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 efficiency on Arc playing cards. Important enhancements for XeSS and PresentMon additionally present that Intel stays dedicated to devoted GPUs regardless of the setbacks.
Precise particulars on particular person Battlemage playing cards are scarce, however in contrast to Alchemist, which solely included mainstream and entry-level merchandise, Battlemage will function an fanatic GPU. Primarily based on Intel’s Xe2 microarchitecture, the brand new technology will seemingly function enhancements in rasterization, ray tracing, and AI upscaling.
Graphics card distributors count on Nvidia to unveil fanatic and high-end RTX 5000 merchandise within the fourth quarter of this yr. The upcoming GeForce RTX 5080 may deal with ray tracing on par with the present flagship, the RTX 4090. In the meantime, that card’s successor – the 5090 – is anticipated to supply a 70-percent efficiency enhance and a 512-bit reminiscence bus. Each playing cards and presumably the RTX 5070 will reportedly embody GDDR7 VRAM.
In the meantime, AMD ought to launch its RDNA 4 collection someday this yr, however it’ll solely embody mid-range and mainstream {hardware}. Latest reviews point out {that a} mid-range Radeon RX 8000 card may outperform the RTX 4070Ti at a a lot cheaper price.