Intel’s upcoming line of PC gaming graphics cards is getting a family brand name: Meet “Intel Arc,” which will officially launch its first product in Q1 2022.
After remaining silent for months, Intel finally gave an update on the company's plans for the GPUs. In some bad news, Intel is pushing back their release from this year to Q1, meaning consumers struggling to secure a graphics card won’t see any relief anytime soon.
But in some good news, Intel did reveal more information about the products. “Arc will span multiple generations, and each generation will have its own code name,” Intel graphics product team member Martyn Stroeve said in a video.
The first entry under Intel Arc, originally codenamed DG2, is now codenamed “Alchemist.” It'll use the company's Intel Xe HPG microarchitecture. The card will then be followed up with “Battlemage, Celestial, and Druid.”
In addition, Alchemist will arrive as both PC desktop graphics cards and as discrete GPUs made for laptops.
To demonstrate the card's capabilities, Intel showed a pre-production Alchemist model running various games, including Metro Exodus and the Crysis Remastered Trilogy, which both feature high-end graphics.
The company also teased a few features in Alchemist, including an Nvidia DLSS-like technology that promises to boost a game’s frame rate, and support for ray tracing, which can create realistic lighting and shadow effects. Alchemist will also support Microsoft DirectX 12 Ultimate.
Intel plans on sharing more details about the upcoming GPUs in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, the company created a new website devoted to the Intel Arc brand.