What happened? After numerous delays, Intel finally released its first Arc graphics cards codenamed Alchemist, which debuted on both desktop and laptops in 2022. The company confirmed that its next generation Xe2 Battlemage graphics cards may be released later this year, followed by Xe3 Celestial in the near future.
The confirmation came last week during an interview with PCWorld, where Tom Petersen from Intel said that the next generation Arc graphics cards will reach the market before CES 2025. Although he did not specify an exact timeframe for the release, it became clear that according to him, the company is aiming for the second half of 2024.
Petersen also mentioned that the first Battlemage chip models are already being tested in the labs, with 30% of Intel's GPU department working on software refinement and preparation for launch. Meanwhile, the majority of the engineering team has already shifted focus to developing the "next thing," which will most likely be Xe3 Celestial - the successor to Battlemage.
Petersen did not reveal many details about the upcoming graphics cards, but he said that the company will share more later this year. Leaked information earlier revealed that the Xe2-HPG (Battlemage) architecture will likely be based on TSMC's N4 manufacturing process and will include up to 56 Xe-cores. Improvements in memory and ray tracing are expected.
The official confirmation of the release timeframe for Battlemage comes a few weeks after Intel inadvertently showcased its plans for the next series of graphics cards. During the launch presentation of the Meteor Lake mobile processors in Japan, the company shared a timeline of "upcoming products in 2024," which featured a graphics chip named Battlemage.
The launch of Alchemist in 2022 was quite hindered - constant delays and setbacks, driver issues, and performance problems in DirectX 11 and DirectX 9 games. Despite ongoing updates and significant performance improvements, Alchemist was not well received and failed to compete with Nvidia and AMD. Intel hopes that with Battlemage (and Celestial) the driver situation will be much better and they will not face similar problems, which would make gamers seriously consider their next graphics card upgrade.
Source: TechSpot
