Skip to main content

Intel Arc Alchemist desktop cards feature a stunning design

Intel offered a tease for its upcoming Arc Alchemist desktop graphics cards on Wednesday. Following the announcement of its Alchemist mobile GPUs, Intel revealed a render of a limited edition reference design that will arrive in the summer.

We don’t have details on pricing or availability, but it seems this limited edition model will serve as Intel’s Founder’s Edition design. We’ve seen several other renders of Intel GPUs in the past, but this is the first one that carries Intel Arc branding, so it should be the final design. It features a dual-fan configuration, similar to Nvidia’s Turing reference designs.

Intel Arc Alchemist reference design render/
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Intel was originally set to launch Arc Alchemist graphics cards in the first few months of 2022. Although the first mobile cards are here, the first we’ve seen from the desktop cards is the tease from Intel’s livestream. Within the first few weeks of the year, however, the launch was reportedly delayed.

Recommended Videos

Leakers now claim that Intel will launch its desktop GPUs in May, perhaps to line up with Arc 5 and Arc 7 mobile graphics. Intel only launched its Arc 3 mobile graphics on Wednesday. The company says the higher-end Arc 5 and Arc 7 mobile graphics will arrive in early summer.

Although we don’t have concrete details about Arc Alchemist on desktop yet, the mobile chips provide a lot of insight. Arc Alchemist GPUs will support DirectX 12 Ultimate, including features like hardware-accelerated ray tracing and variable rate shading. However, Intel’s dedicated XMX cores seem to be what will shake up the graphics market.

These dedicated cores handle A.I. inference — essentially making a prediction from a trained A.I. model. That allows Intel to use them for Xe Super Sampling, or XeSS, which is an upscaling technology that can scale resolutions by as much as 2.3x. It functions similarly to Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), but it has one key advantage: XeSS works with GPUs from AMD, Nvidia, and Intel.

Arc Alchemist desktop cards may still be a few months off, but we’ve seen these cards in action from various benchmark leaks. The first leaks arrived as early as April 2021, showing the flagship card rivaling Nvidia’s RTX 3080. Recent leaks are slightly more modest, showing the flagship card performing closer to the RTX 3070 Ti.

On the low-end, we’ve seen leaks for the A380M. This is the lowest card in Intel’s Arc Alchemist lineup, according to rumors, and it will target a $199 price to compete with Nvidia’s RTX 3050 and AMD’s RX 6500 XT.

We’ll have to wait until we have the Arc Alchemist desktop cards to draw any conclusions. Although Intel has designed graphics for many years, this is the company’s first stab at the discrete enthusiast crowd. It appears Intel is set up to handle the heat, though, with the company estimating it will ship four million GPUs by the end of the year.

Jacob Roach
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…
Intel Arc B580 vs. Nvidia RTX 4060: a one-sided showdown
The back of the Intel Arc B580 graphics card.

Intel is back with one of the best graphics cards you can buy -- the Arc B580. As you can read in my Intel Arc B580 review, it's a graphics card that has no business being as powerful as it is given how inexpensive it is. And when comparing it to its main competitor, Nvidia's RTX 4060, Intel mops the floor with its rival.

I've been testing Intel's latest GPU over the last couple of weeks, and I decided to put it head-to-head with Nvidia's budget RTX 4060, which is currently the second-most-popular GPU on Steam. Given the performance I've seen, Intel's GPU deserves to start climbing up the rankings in those same charts.
Specs and pricing

Read more
Prices for Intel’s Arc B580 are already shooting through the roof
The Intel logo on the Arc B580 graphics card.

Intel just launched its new $249 Arc B580 graphics card, and as you can read in our Intel Arc B580 review, it's one of the best graphics cards you can buy. It seems PC gamers have gotten the memo, as most models of the card are sold out online. If you want to get one now, you'll have to spend close to double the list price.

Looking at online retailers, it looks like Newegg has the most models listed for sale, though almost all of them are sold out. The only models available come from Gunnir, and they're both very expensive. The , while the . Both are sold by third-party sellers -- they aren't sold and shipped by Newegg -- so I wouldn't recommend spending up for one of these cards.

Read more
It’s finally time to stop ignoring Intel GPUs
Two intel Arc graphics cards on a pink background.

Intel is taking another swing at making it among the best graphics cards with the Arc B580, which is set to launch in a matter of days. It's the first time we're seeing discrete graphics on desktop packing Intel's Battlemage architecture, and it's arriving just weeks before AMD and Nvidia are set to launch new generations.

I'm sure you've heard about Intel's first attempt with discrete GPUs, and all of the problems that ensued. Things have changed quite a bit over the past few years, though. I need to wait until the Arc B580 is here to fully put it through its paces, but based on what Intel has shared so far, it's a card you should definitely keep an eye on.
Fulfilling AMD's role

Read more