Battlemage GPUs in Pictures: Intel Could Have Some Next-Gen Graphics Cards to Shake Up the Budget Market
Intel may have two Battlemage GPUs ready to lure low-end gamers away from AMD or Nvidia, a new leak suggests.
Judging from the shipping manifests discovered by hardware leaker Harukaze5719 for X, the Battlemage X2 and X3 graphics cards are coming.
BMG X2BMG X3 photo.twitter.com/lr8uD3bCCzJune 29, 2024
These have 32 and 28 Xe2 cores respectively. So these are lower-end graphics cards.
To give you some perspective, the current flagship for Alchemist, the Arc A770, has 32 Xe cores – but remember that Intel will have pushed through architectural improvements with the new generation for a significant performance boost. Additionally, the rate at which Arc graphics drivers are improving is a positive sign for future frame rates, too.
If Tom’s Hardwarewho highlighted the above post on X, notes that another recent leak noted the 32 Xe2 core GPU is present on an official Intel designer tools webpage. So, the evidence is mounting for the existence of this model, apparently tied to a slightly more modest low-end GPU according to this new leak.
Analysis: Low magic is all good in our spellbooks
How about a more powerful Battlemage GPU? Well, as you may recall, there was an ‘enthusiast-class’ model with 56 Xe2 cores (referred to as a G10), but we heard some time ago that this had likely been cancelled . This new rumor, and the lack of mention of such a beefier, more mid-range GPU (well, it would certainly be mid-range in next-gen terms) means that hopes for such a graphics card have pretty much faded.
That’s not to say it couldn’t happen – its existence was hinted at recently , and it could still pop up, perhaps later than the initial Battlemage launches – but we’re not holding out much hope at this point. Intel seems to be targeting the budget end of the GPU market with its 2nd-gen boards, and honestly, we don’t think that’s a bad idea – far from it.
If Team Blue can produce some relatively powerful graphics cards that come at an attractive price point that makes them a value challenger to AMD and Nvidia, then in many ways that’s all we can ask for.
The budget end of the market has actually been neglected for a long time – especially by Nvidia – so if Intel is going to shake up the GPU world somewhere, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if it were at the lower end. After all, that’s where many PC gamers, those on a stricter budget, are looking.
Whatever Battlemage turns out to be, we almost certainly won’t see next-gen GPUs until 2025, as rumors have been suggesting for some time now.
