Intel’s Battlemage might beat Nvidia and AMD to the punch

Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

Out of each nan GPU news we’ve been getting successful nan past fewer weeks, accusation astir Intel Arc Battlemage has been beautiful scarce — but it appears that Intel mightiness still astonishment us. According to a caller leak, Intel’s next-gen desktop GPUs mightiness subordinate nan ranks of nan best graphics cards arsenic early arsenic adjacent month. Launching successful December would surely springiness Intel an unexpected separator complete AMD and Nvidia, and it’s an separator that it could really usage correct now.

As ever pinch these types of leaks, we’re moving pinch a vague connection and reference into it to fig retired what’s going on. In this instance, nan rumors comes from Golden Pig Upgrade Pack connected Weibo, a personification pinch a beautiful bully estimation erstwhile it comes to hardware leaks.

The leaker shared that they were “looking guardant to nan awesome capacity of Battlemage adjacent month.” There’s besides a explanation successful location that adds that they’re talking astir nan desktop version, which is important, arsenic Battlemage architecture has already made an quality successful Intel’s Lunar Lake processors. This time, we’re talking astir nan desktop versions, and Intel has been beautiful quiet wherever those are concerned.

Golden Pig Upgrade Pack / Weibo

Two cardinal takeaways from that cryptic connection are that Intel mightiness motorboat Battlemage adjacent period — which is simply a full batch sooner than expected astatine this constituent — and that these GPUs will connection “wonderful performance.” Let’s unpack some claims.

For starters, nan merchandise day for Battlemage has been uncertain until now. Early this year, Intel’s Tom Petersen said he hoped we mightiness perceive much astir Battlemage earlier CES 2025. However, aft a quiet twelvemonth pinch few updates, leakers adjusted their expectations for each 3 GPU manufacturers. Nvidia and AMD are now some said to motorboat their next-gen RTX 50-series and RDNA 4 graphics cards astatine CES 2025 successful January, and astir leakers expected Intel to do nan same.

If Intel manages to astonishment america each and merchandise Battlemage successful December, it’ll beryllium bully news each astir for Team Blue. For starters, erstwhile faced pinch next-gen competition, Battlemage mightiness struggle to compete, but against current-gen counterparts, it mightiness do a bully job. The vacation play is besides a bully clip to waste caller graphics cards, truthful if Intel tin snag immoderate of those sales, that’d springiness Battlemage an early boost.

The capacity declare is conscionable arsenic absorbing to maine arsenic nan merchandise day speculation. For months, leakers person been indicating that Intel mightiness beryllium aiming for nan mainstream conception pinch Battlemage, and that nan astir high-end type of nan GPU has been canceled. A caller benchmark showed an unnamed Battlemage GPU pinch conscionable 20 Xe cores, which is little than nan last-gen flagship Arc A770.

Remember not to return immoderate of nan supra astatine look value, arsenic each of this is conscionable speculation until Intel announces Battlemage. However, if nan leak proves to beryllium true, Intel mightiness get a chance to motorboat its next-gen cards a period aliases 2 earlier AMD and Nvidia.