Intel’s Battlemage May Help Make GPUs Affordable Again

While upcoming GPUs similar the rumored Nvidia 50-series volition supposedly interruption the slope and powerfulness thresholds successful adjacent measure, we whitethorn hopefully find our fund enactment from Intel and its long-awaited Battlemage GPUs. The beleaguered chipmaker confirmed it has immoderate “big graphics news” dropping Tuesday.

Intel released a teaser video implicit the Thanksgiving vacation interruption showing what’s evidently a graphics paper of immoderate kind. Since then, the rumor mill has hammered on astir the chipmaker’s upcoming B570 and B580 GPUs. Team Blue has tried pushing its discrete GPUs for a fewer years, and its Alchemist lineup, similar the A580, is already entrenched for budget-end buyers. Leaks for the Battlemage bespeak the higher-end GPU volition beryllium Intel’s hardest-hitting graphics processor to date.

We’ve got immoderate large graphics quality 👀… pic.twitter.com/sylnOZogMq

— Intel Gaming (@IntelGaming) November 30, 2024

There person been leaks connected Amazon, and astatine slightest one YouTuber has offered america a look astatine what Intel’s B580 graphics paper could look like. This mentation from OEM ASRock, with its 3 fans, is supposedly overclocked to 2.8 GHz with 12 GB of GDDR6 VRAM. According to these images leaked online, the caller paper should person a PCIe 4.0 interface and usage dual 8-pin powerfulness connectors. It surely won’t beryllium arsenic power-hungry arsenic the astir high-end GPUs from Nvidia oregon AMD.

The champion Intel could bash is not try to vie with the upcoming Nvidia 50-series oregon the Radeon RX 8000 bid from AMD. Specs leaks reported by Videocardz past period amusement the B570 could athletics 18 Xe2-Cores, portion the B580 could bash 20 Xe2-Cores. The lower-end paper could besides person 10 GB of GDDR6 RAM. If you judge the leaked specs, some ASRock cards volition enactment 3 DisplayPort 2.1 slots and an HDMI 2.1 port.

This indicates that these cards volition beryllium cheaper than the top-of-the-line GPUs you’ll find elsewhere, but Intel hasn’t dropped immoderate hint astir pricing. Plenty of unconfirmed rumors connected the Chinese societal media app Weibo mention synthetic benchmarks, but possibly the champion we could assertion is that Intel’s GPU could lucifer the performance of the Nvidia Geforce RTX 4060 Ti. That Ada Lovelace paper starts astatine $300, but we don’t cognize what immoderate RTX 5060 GPU whitethorn cost.

Generations beryllium damned. More affordable graphics processors request to beryllium connected the market. Intel’s mobile and desktop offerings volition enactment the company’s XeSS upscaling tech, the astir caller ace sampling exertion compared to AMD’s FSR and Nvidia’s DLSS. If Intel tin get much games to enactment it, XeSS could beryllium an other enactment to grow show successful immoderate titles.

Intel’s latest Arrow Lake desktop processors besides committedness bully gaming show without needing a discrete GPU. Of course, an APU volition ne'er bushed the spot of a afloat card. The latest Core Ultra 200S lineup for desktops isn’t expected to beryllium a 14th-gen desktop processor follow-up, particularly regarding gaming performance.

On the mobile end, Intel has promoted the ARC graphics for chips similar the Intel Core Ultra 9 288V, which should adjacent coagulated show successful immoderate demanding games, though you won’t find a laptop with that SKU retired successful the wild. We’ve utilized RTX 4060s connected respective mobile platforms, and with the close configuration, it tin tally games reasonably well. We’d beryllium funny to spot Intel plan a mentation of Battlemage for laptops and desktops. Perhaps we could yet person an all-Intel gaming laptop, arsenic weird arsenic that sounds.