Intel Reveals Arc, Competitor to GeForce and Radeon
The color palette in the GPU market will be supplemented by the color blue. Soon, in addition to GeForce from Nvidia and Radeon from AMD, gamers will be able to choose Arc from Intel.
- Intel unveiled Arc, a new series of high-performance gaming GPUs;
- The first generation Intel Arc is called Alchemist;
- The new GPUs are expected to hit the market as early as Q1 2022.
Intel intends to conquer the GPU market dominated so far by AMD and Nvidia. The manufacturer, so far known in this area for its relatively weak integrated chips, is working on high-performance cards for demanding users, so far referred to as Xe-HPG (High Performance Graphics) or DG2. Now the company revealed the official naming of its new devices - gamers, get ready for the arrival of Intel Arc GPUs.
"Arc" is the name of the graphics platform - you could say it's the equivalent of GeForce. Intel also writes about "Alchemist", the term is supposed to be a generation name, similar to Ampere at Nvidia for example. The following gens are to be called Battlemage, Celestial and Druid. We have to admit that the naming is certainly original, alphabetical and quite gaming. Intel has presented gameplay footage from games running on test Arc chips:
The footage presents such titles as Metro: Exodus, Days Gone and Forza Horizon 4, all of them running smoothly. Intel's GPUs are expected to be fully compatible with DirectX 12 Ultimate and will offer hardware support of ray tracing. The company also announced a counterpart to AMD's FidelityFX and Nvidia's DLSS technology - AI-based Super Sampling. Roger Chandler, Intel's vice president and general manager of Client Graphics Products and Solutions:
"Today marks a key moment in the graphics journey we started just a few years ago. The launch of the Intel Arc brand and the reveal of future hardware generations signifies Intel’s deep and continued commitment to gamers and creators everywhere."
Unfortunately, nothing is currently known about the pricing for these devices, but we have learned the approximate release date for Arc. Intel's GPUs, both desktop and mobile, have been announced for the first quarter of 2022. As you can read in the post we linked in the first paragraph, we expect at least a few models. Intel is expected to reveal more details later this year.
