Intel’s first desktop graphics cards are here, but they won't be sold as standalone products.
Instead, the Iris Xe DG1 GPUs arrive as add-in cards that PC makers can bundle into their pre-built desktop systems. The chipmaker says it partnered with PC maker Asus and GPU vendor Colorful to create the products, which can slot into a desktop via a PCIe slot. Expect them to be sold in PC systems targeting “mainstream users” as well as small and medium businesses.
“The Iris Xe discrete add-in card will be paired with 9th gen (Coffee Lake-S) and 10th gen (Comet Lake-S) Intel Core desktop processors and Intel B460, H410, B365, and H310C chipset-based motherboards," Intel says.
“These motherboards require a special BIOS that supports Intel Iris Xe, so the cards won’t be compatible with other systems,” it adds. “The TDP of the cards is 30W.”
The company didn’t release exact specs for the DG1 cards, so we don’t know how much processing power the GPUs can muster. However, Hardwareluxx.de claims they've been built using Intel’s “10 nano-meter SuperFin” technology and run with 4GB of LPDDR4X memory.
Because Intel is releasing the GPUs without much fanfare, we suspect there's not much to brag about here in terms of performance. But according to the chipmaker, the products can support up to three 4K HDR displays simultaneously and run popular PC games in high definition.
The company plans on making a bigger push into the desktop graphics market later this year with the “DG2,” which is designed for PC gaming. To build the hardware, Intel is tapping a third-party foundry, possibly TSMC or Samsung, the manufacturers behind AMD's and Nvidia's rival graphics cards.