Skip to main content

Intel hasn’t given up on GPUs yet, and we should all be happy about that

Against all odds, it appears that Intel is still on course with its next-gen graphics cards, and its plans reach far into the future. A new report tells us that Intel may have ordered a large number of GPU chips from TSMC.

While Intel Arc struggles to compete against the best graphics cards, this is still great news for the GPU market as a whole — here’s why.

Intel Arc A770 GPU installed in a test bench.

Compared to AMD and Nvidia, Intel is still very new to the discrete GPU market, and it only has a limited number of cards up for grabs. The range is modest, including cards like the Arc A770, Arc A750, and Arc A380. It failed to shake things up, arriving late in its respective GPU lifecycle, but it was priced competitively — on par with Intel’s plan to focus on performance per dollar instead of pure numbers.

It has long been known that Intel was planning to follow Arc Alchemist with Battlemage, and then eventually, Celestial GPUs, but all of these plans seemed a little tentative lately. That’s primarily because Raja Koduri, the previous head of Intel’s Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics department, parted ways with Intel at the end of March.

The development of Intel Arc felt shakey enough from the beginning, with multiple delays and poor optimization upon launch. Was Koduri’s departure going to be the end of the range? Today’s report tells us otherwise, and indeed, Intel appears to be more on track than many might have expected.

As reported by Taiwan’s Commercial Times, Intel is said to have come to an exciting understanding with the world’s biggest semiconductor foundry TSMC. It expects that there will be a growing demand for consumer graphics, including those for gamers and those for professional uses, so it’s already readying its next-gen chips.

Two intel Arc graphics cards on a pink background.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

Intel Battlemage is reported to be based on the Xe2 architecture and fabricated on TSMC’s 4nm process. It will be the first to arrive — insider sources now pin the expected release date of the GPUs to be sometime in the second half of 2024. Intel Celestial will follow in the second half of 2026, based on a 3nm process and featuring Xe3 architecture.

It’s great to hear that Intel hasn’t given up on its graphics department. Unfortunately, it looks like it’ll be well over a year before it releases any new GPUs, which means it might miss the window to compete against AMD’s and Nvidia’s current lineups.

Intel may not play a big part in the current GPU market, but it’s important for it to continue. Nvidia dominates the field, and that allows it to command the prices as much as it wants to. With the growing presence of Intel and AMD, Nvidia may finally get a taste of real competition one day, and the consumers would only benefit from that.

Editors' Recommendations

Monica J. White
Monica is a UK-based freelance writer and self-proclaimed geek. A firm believer in the "PC building is just like expensive…
Intel CEO on high GPU prices: ‘You should be frustrated’
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger presenting Arc Alchemist GPUs.

Intel finally put a date on its Arc Alchemist graphics cards during its Innovation 2022 event. The flagship A770 is releasing on October 12, but that's not the most interesting part of the announcement. The card is only $330, and Intel says that's a very intentional price point.

Before announcing the release date, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger had a clear message on high GPU prices: "You should be frustrated." The executive showed how the cost of GPUs has risen significantly over the past few years, and said the A770 looks to break that trend. "[GPUs] have just gotten super expensive, and we don't think they need to," Gelsinger added.

Read more
Intel Arc Alchemist may let you overclock virtually for free
Intel Arc A770 graphics card.

Intel Arc Alchemist graphics cards continue to surprise us in many ways prior to their actual release. This time, a new teaser from an interview with Intel fellow Tom Petersen reveals some more information about the GPUs, including their overclocking capabilities.

According to Petersen, Intel Arc might be unexpectedly good at overclocking and striking the right balance between performance and power consumption -- so much so that a massive overclock was achieved at almost no extra energy cost.

Read more
Have the Intel Arc GPUs been canceled? I sure hope not
Intel Arc demo: Ryan Shrout plays Shadow of the Tomb Raider on a gaming PC.

A  rumor is circulating that Intel's Arc graphics cards are being canceled, and unlike previous rumors we've heard on the matter, this one seems to hold some weight. The first discrete desktop GPUs from Intel have seen ups and downs since being announced around a year ago, but this is the first word we've gotten that the company may abandon the project.

Headlines and YouTube thumbnails don't tell the full story here, though, and they're primed to spread misinformation considering that Intel's first-gen Arc Alchemist GPUs aren't available in the U.S. yet and should launch soon. It's impossible to say if Arc will eventually bite the dust, but there's a compelling reason it shouldn't.

Read more