With Intel recently announcing it would be launching its own range of graphics cards, starting with the ARC 'Alchemist' model due out next year, some may be wondering how the company will cope in the current GPU climate. With supplies of graphics hardware expected to get worse before it gets better, it's uncertain what the market will be like by the time Intel's first card hits the shelves, both on and offline. Despite this, people are still interested in what this first model will be like, and how it will compare to its competitors. A recent leak suggests that the Alchemist may go up against some current top-end GPUs.
According to a YouTube video uploaded by Moore's Law Is Dead, who is reliable with leaks, the new Intel graphics card may be able to take on up-to-date products, such as the Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti, which came out this summer. While this is the speculated equivalent the Alchemist will be able to compete with, this is at the top end, with the minimum performance for it expected to be about on par with the RTX 3070, which is a little older but still a decent card to be able to match. Both of these cards have 8GB of VRAM.
The video leak also about how Nvidia is likely feeling threatened by this new range of ARC products that Intel will be putting out, based on the fact that the latter has "brand recognition" when it comes to computers and computer components. Even though Nvidia may be getting ready to start developing its 4000 series, there is a chance that Intel may be quick off the starting blocks when it launches Alchemist in 2022.
There's also the rumored Nvidia 3080 Super refresh that leaked recently, and will allegedly have 12GB of VRAM. This suggests that the graphics card giant is looking to make some extra headway in getting ahead of its newest rival. With the ARC Alchemist supposedly having 16GB of memory, it could come out strong and make both Nvidia and AMD scramble to put out even better products. While Intel is perhaps best known for making CPUs, it does have experience creating integrated graphics hardware, even if not actual graphics cards.
Having said that, early benchmark tests on the Alchemist suggest that there may be more work to do before Intel can declare it a card worthy of taking on the other two GPU behemoths on the market. As time goes on, it's likely that more leaks, rumors, and additional benchmarks will make themselves known, but until the product actually comes out, all people can do is speculate at this stage.
The Intel ARC Alchemist is due out in Q1 2022.
Source: PC Invasion