The roll out of Intel's first generation Arc Alchemist GPUs back in 2022 was a slow process that took several quarters, which ultimately hurt sales and adoption rates and relegating them to the budget end of the best graphics cards. With its second generation Arc Battlemage products, the company doesn't want to repeat the same mistake and intends to introduce them this year ahead of the critical holiday season. This is according to a report from ComputerBase, citing sources at Embedded World.
Intel aims to launch its second generation Arc 'Battlemage' graphics processors this fall, ideally capturing the holiday sales surge that kicks off around Black Friday, with plans for a release by November at the latest, according to the report. This timing would let Intel capitalize on the lucrative holiday shopping season, a critical sales period in the retail calendar, especially in the U.S.
The timeline suggests that Intel's Battlemage launch should occur by November at the latest in a bid to let Intel's add-in-board partners to have enough time to ramp up production of their graphics cards and ship actual products to retailers worldwide. However, the initial launch could occur earlier — exact details are not yet fully nailed down.
Intel is in the process of bringing up two new Battlemage discrete graphics processing units, known as Battlemage-G10 and Battlemage-G21, based on recent leaks. The naming convention suggests that Battlemage-G10 will be the more powerful of the two, targeting the midrange market, while Battlemage-G21 will cater to entry-level systems that still need a standalone graphics processor.
Neither Battlemage-G10 nor Battlemage-G21 GPUs are finalized yet, as G21 is rumored to be in the pre-qualification stage. This stage involves testing the chip's functionality, reliability, and performance, but it does not guarantee readiness for mass production. However, if these pre-qualification tests are successful and the GPUs meet the necessary criteria for performance, power, and yields, they could move forward to mass production. It's unclear whether Battlemage-G10 is at a similar state or if it's further out — note that the previous Alchemist generation launched the smaller ACM-G11 first, in the Arc A380.
Intel's first generation Arc Alchemist only barely managed to compete against mainstream GPUs from AMD and Nvidia — the Arc A750 matched up decently against the RTX 3060 12GB and RX 6600 XT, both of which were over a year old at the time. In fact, Nvidia and AMD were in the midst of launching their newer generation parts that would widen the performance deficit. This was all largely thanks to Alchemist being delayed by several quarters due to driver readiness. With Battlemage, Intel will have more or less stable drivers and an established driver development team, so the new family of chips won't face the same challenges.
What remains to be seen is what market segments will Intel be able to address with its Battlemage GPUs. Intel potentially faces a similar problem as last time, as potentially Nvidia's Blackwell-based RTX 50-series and AMD's RDNA 4-powered RX 8000-series could also start showing up before the end of the year. Battlemage should deliver plenty of improvements, and hopefully Intel will be better prepared for the fight against AMD and Nvidia.
