Intel may not be celebrating, but there are plenty of things in store for the blue guys. The new generation of GPUs for desktop platforms is about to arrive. We’ve known for a while that the launch is scheduled for Q4 2024, but Intel has been keeping a low profile since the start of the year, and it’s hard to predict what the newcomers have in store for us. While the Core Ultra may have disappointed some, Intel’s technological choices over the last few months have been enough to arouse the interest of the more curious. The excellent Lunar Lake generation, the audacious Alder Lake… What can we expect from this new Battlemage generation? Intel’s ‘Xe2’ Battlemage architecture has already made its debut in Lunar Lake SoCs, but it is difficult to transpose its promises to the world of dedicated boards.
Up until now, leaks have announced, without much conviction, an arrival before Black Friday. This time it’s Golden Pig Upgrade, a leaker with a solid track record and generally solid information, who has announced the imminent arrival of the new Intel cards. According to his information, Intel’s Arc Battlemage GPUs should arrive in December, just before CES 2025. This shifted timetable would put the new cards under fire from the arrival of the next RTX 50 and Radeon 8000 a few weeks later, during CES itself.
Intel Battlemage: cards up to scratch?
While the leaker doesn’t go into too many details, he does take the liberty of outlining a trend. Something he had already done, well ahead of time, on the previous generation ARC, again with a degree of reliability. For him, Arc Battlemage “works like a charm”. This information could foreshadow a more competitive positioning for intel in the desktop graphics card segment. Given the lack of flexibility in the graphics card market, we’d all be delighted if Intel could spring a real surprise by shaking up the established positions.
