Skip to main content

Intel to help ease GPU shortage with 4 million Arc GPUs

Intel has finally shared some news about its Arc Alchemist lineup, and not a moment too soon. After weeks of speculation about delays and possible release dates, we finally know more about the upcoming first-gen Intel gaming graphics cards.

The tech giant seems to have huge plans for Arc Alchemist. The company has announced that it’s readying to ship 4 million Arc GPUs before the end of 2022, and it also outlined possible launch windows for laptop, desktop, and workstation models. There’s also a little cherry on top of an already great sundae — Intel has teased next-gen “ultra-enthusiast” GPUs.

Concept art of an Intel DG2 graphics card.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Intel is hosting an investor meeting and it has prepared a road map to go with it that covers some of the plans it has for the year. Perhaps some of the most interesting information is related to Intel’s upcoming discrete graphics cards lineup, which has been long-awaited.

Recommended Videos

The road to the release of Intel Arc Alchemist has been quite rocky so far, with multiple conflicting rumors and very little information from Intel itself. While a full Arc release was hoped for in the first quarter of 2022, we know for a fact that it won’t be happening. However, Intel has confirmed that the first laptops containing Intel’s discrete gaming GPUs will begin to ship in the first quarter of this year.

Desktop users will have to wait a little longer to get their share of Intel Arc. Add-in cards for desktops will begin shipping in the second quarter of 2022, followed by workstation GPUs in the third quarter. Intel’s desktop graphics cards are rumored to rival some of the best GPUs that AMD and Nvidia currently offer, matching or even surpassing the performance of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3070 Ti.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger delivers the Day 1 closing keynote at IAA Mobility
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger. Intel

Intel’s cards are being prepared by the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group (AXG,) and there will apparently be plenty of GPUs. Intel said that AXG is on track to ship up to 4 million graphics cards before the end of 2022. At a time when graphics cards are so scarce, this is music to the ears of many desperate PC builders. Providing ample supply would also mean a good start for Intel, allowing it to break into the market with a sizeable contribution.

The company has also teased next-gen graphics cards, dubbed Intel Arc Celestial. Intel has said that these cards are made to address the “ultra-enthusiast segment.” Not much else has been said, but if Celestial is meant to be a high-end GPU, it will likely have to rival not just the current top GPUs, such as the RTX 3090, but also future Nvidia and AMD models. It seems unlikely that Intel will release Arc Celestial this year, which implies that it will be a competitor for Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace and AMD’s next-gen graphics cards.

Intel’s news is great all around, and if everything does work out as planned, we’ve got an exciting year ahead. With the GPU market as dry as it is, we’ll take any GPUs by this point — as long as there’s a steady supply.

Monica J. White
Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…
New Intel Arc benchmark implies the B580 wasn’t a one-off
The Intel Arc B580 sitting among other graphics cards.

Intel's Arc B570 is right around the corner, set to ring in the new year of graphics card releases on January 16. It was just spotted in its first leaked benchmark, and the results definitely surprised me. According to the leaked benchmark, the Arc B570 might repeat the success of the B580 and score a spot among the best graphics cards -- all thanks to Intel's precise approach to the performance-per-dollar metric.

The GPU was spotted in a leaked Geekbench test by X (Twitter) user GawroskiT. The B570 scored 86,716 points in the OpenCL test, which isn't the best measure of gaming performance, but it helps that we can compare it to the higher-end model in that same test. As per Wccftech, the B580 sits at around 95,000 to 100,000 points in that benchmark, which makes the Arc B570 roughly 12% slower than the B580. There's some give-and-take here, but that 12% is an interesting number given the pricing of the B570.

Read more
AMD may still wait for Nvidia before unleashing RDNA 4
Various AMD RX 9000 series graphics cards.

AMD's future best graphics cards should be right around the corner, but with no specifics, it's hard to say when exactly we'll reach that particular corner. However, a new leak from the Chiphell forum implies that whatever release date AMD may have had in mind for its RX 9000 series GPUs may have changed. The most interesting part is that the leaker implies Nvidia may have played a part in this decision.

Before we dive in, remember that all of this is speculation. During its CES 2025 keynote, AMD barely spoke about RDNA 4, so the release dates are a mystery. Some leakers repeated a rumored release date of January 23 in the past few days, though, and according to Napoleon on the Chiphell forums, that may no longer be true.

Read more
AMD says that FSR 4 might not be an RDNA 4 exclusive after all
AMD announcing FSR 4 during CES 2025.

AMD will soon launch new graphics cards, although they were pretty much absent from its CES 2025 keynote. Fortunately, a new interview with Frank Azor, AMD's chief architect of gaming solutions and gaming marketing, gives us a little bit more information. One interesting tidbit from the interview is that FSR 4, currently an RDNA 4 exclusive, might still one day make it to older AMD GPUs.

Azor spoke to Michael Quesada in an interview that was later shared by El Chapuzas Informatico and VideoCardz. They spoke about FSR 4, but also the general price point and the predicted performance of the RX 9070 XT. Throughout the interview, it's made clear that AMD is angling for a value-oriented product this time around.

Read more