The Intel graphics team is going all out with its ARC series marketing campaign & has even given a glimpse of its next-generation ARC Gaming Graphics Card design.
Intel Gives A Glimpse of Its ARC Gaming Graphics Card Design, Features Dual Slot & Dual Fan Design With Xe-HPG Alchemist GPU
Yesterday, Intel lifted the curtains off its ARC branding which will compete against the GeForce and Radeon brands. The blue team confirmed that its first ARC products will be coming to desktops and laptops in Q1 2022. These products will be based on the ARC Alchemist GPU which is the first of the many GPUs planned out in the ARC roadmap.
We’ve painted pixels in the sky with 1,000 Intel drones. Now, that’s a visual experience. What will you create next? https://t.co/FYeygLy6Oh #IntelArc #inteldrones #inteldronelightshows #dronelightshows pic.twitter.com/c0Q4ycNYVS
— Intel Graphics (@IntelGraphics) August 17, 2021
Coming to the design, Intel hosted a drone show as a form of marketing for its ARC brand unveil. The drones can be seen forming the shape of a graphics card during the show which resembles a leaked design we saw several months ago. The card features a dual-slot and dual-fan form factor and even has similar curves on the shroud as the engineering sample that leaked out back in April by Moore’s Law is Dead. What’s more interesting is that even the 9-blade fans are the same as the one from the earlier sample.
This specific variant was rumored to feature the top Alchemist (DG2-512) GPU with 4096 cores and up to 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. The leaked design showed a massive aluminum heatsink & a small acrylic plate with the Intel logo etched on top. The leaked variant featured an 8+6 power connector configuration with a TDP of 275W. These might change in the final variant of the card but what the drones show makes it seem that the leaked variant is the final design choice for Intel’s first ARC GPU-based graphics cards.
Intel Xe-HPG Alchemist 512 EU Discrete Gaming Graphics Cards
The top Alchemist 512 EU variant has just one configuration listed so far and that utilizes the full die with 4096 cores, 256-bit bus interface, and up to 16 GB GDDR6 memory (8 GB GDDR6 listed too). Based on demand and yields, Intel could produce more variants of this flagship chip but we can’t say for sure right now.
The Alchemist 512 EU chip is expected to measure at around 396mm2 which makes it bigger than the AMD RDNA 2 and NVIDIA Ampere offerings. The Alchemist -512 GPU will come in the BGA-2660 package which measures 37.5mm x 43mm. NVIDIA’s Ampere GA104 measures 392mm2 which means that the flagship Alchemist chip is comparable in size while the Navi 22 GPU measures 336mm2 or around 60mm2 less. This isn’t the final die size of the chip but it should be very close.
NVIDIA packs in tensor cores and much bigger RT/FP32 cores in its chips while AMD RDNA 2 chips pack a single ray accelerator unit per CU and Infinity Cache. Intel will also have dedicated hardware onboard its Alchemist GPUs for Raytracing & AI-assisted super-sampling tech.
The Xe-HPG Alchemist 512 EU chip is suggested to feature clocks of up to 2.2 GHz though we don’t know if these are the average clocks or the maximum boost clocks. Also, it is stated that Intel’s initial TDP target was 225-250W but that’s been upped to around 275W now. We can expect a 300W variant with dual 8-pin connectors too if Intel wants to push its clocks even further.
We have seen the Intel Xe-HPG Alchemist GPU-based discrete graphics card engineering sample leak out a few months back along with some rumored performance and pricing figures, you can read more on that here. Based on the timeline, the Xe-HPG Alchemist lineup will compete against NVIDIA’s Ampere & AMD RDNA 2 GPUs since both companies aren’t expected to launch their next-gen parts by the very end of 2022. The Xe-HPG ARC GPUs will be coming to the mobility platform too and will be featured in Alder Lake-P notebooks.
| GPU Family | Intel Xe-LP (1st Gen) | Intel Xe-HPG (1st Gen) | Intel Xe-HP (1st Gen) | Intel Xe-HP (2nd Gen) | Intel Xe-HPC (1st Gen) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU Segment | Entry-Level (Integrated + Discrete) | Mainstream / High-End Gaming (Discrete) | Datacenter & Workstation | Datacenter & Workstation | High Performance Computing |
| GPU Gen | Gen 12 | Gen 12 | Gen 12 | Gen 13 | Gen 12 |
| Process Node | Intel 10nm SuperFin | External Foundry | Intel 10nm SuperFin | TBA | Intel 10nm SuperFin External Foundry |
| GPU Products | Tiger Lake DG1/SG1 Cards |
ARC Alchemist GPUs | Arctic Sound | Jupiter Sound | Ponte Vecchio |
| Specs / Design | 96 EUs / 1 Tile /1 GPU | 512 EUs / 1 Tile / 1 GPU | 2048 EUs / 4 Tiles Per GPU | TBA | 8192 EUs / 16 Tiles per GPU |
| Memory Subsystem | LPDDR4/GDDR6 | GDDR6 | HBM2e | TBA | HBM2e |
| Launch | 2020 | 2021 | 2021 | 2022? | 2021-2022 |
News Source: Videocardz
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