Intel has announced the release of its first consumer GPU processors for PC gaming, which will be available in the first quarter of 2022

Sep, 2021 - By SMI

Intel Arc is the brand name for their consumer GPUs, which were announced on August 16, 2021. With its new high-end discrete GPUs, Arc will compete with Nvidia GeForce and AMD Radeon GPUs.

Intel’s new Arc GPUs will be capable of video upscaling, variable-rate shading, mesh shading, and ray tracing on real time basis. Furthermore, the company promises a new AI-accelerated solution that will compete with Nvidia's DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and AMD's FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution); these are not based on AI.

The Arc brand will encompass hardware, software, and services over many hardware generations, with the first generation, code-named Alchemist, based on the Xe HPG microarchitecture (previously known as DG2). According to the CPU maker; Celestial, Druid and Battlemage are the code names for future Arc generations. Intel has released a teaser video that shows off the prototype silicon that drives PUBG, Psychonauts 2, Metro Exodus, and other games.

Arc will be Intel's first genuine entry into the gaming GPU industry; however, it won't be a zero-sum game. The corporation has years of experience in updating and building graphics drivers, and it follows AMD and Nvidia's lead in providing both beta driver packages and stable driver packages with improvements for certain games. While the Intel Iris Xe graphics in 11th-generation Core laptops cannot compete with AMD's integrated GPUs in its Ryzen APUs, they can run numerous games at 720 p or 1080 p.

Intel VP, Roger Chandler stated that the launch of the Intel Arc brand and the reveal of upcoming hardware generations implies Intel’s deep and continued commitment to gamers and creators all over the world. They have teams that do incredible work to guarantee the delivery of first-class and frictionless experiences when the products are available in the next year.

The details on pricing, performance, and availability of the Arc GPU are not made public yet. However, if the global GPU shortage continues into early months of 2022, Intel will have a unique opportunity as gamers are desperate for any reasonably capable GPU chips.