It seems the world is ready to embrace a new name in the GPU market once Intel launches its first range of discreet graphics cards. With Nvidia recently announcing the RTX 3090 Ti, an even more powerful version of the already beefy RTX 3090, it seems "team blue" may have some catching up to do in order to best its rivals, but the company seems confident that it will be able to shake things up. With that, it seems the tech industry is one step closer to receiving the first Arc cards.
According to a recent report from PC Gamer, Intel is not only boasting that a "new era" of graphics cards is on the horizon, but the company has begun sending high performance GPUs out to its partners now, and there are some pretty big names on the list. The OEM customers who will be getting hold of the "Alchemist" chip ready for manufacturing include the likes of MSI, Dell, Gigabyte, Lenovo, HP, ASUS, Acer, and Samsung, as well as others. A press release says there are more than 50 designs in total that have been announced for the Arc graphics card.
Given that OEMs will soon be making the hardware based on the company's chip, rumors of the Intel Alchemist getting released in Q1 2022 may be right on the money. With so many other products about to be launched, there's going to be a lot of competition, as well as a lot of choice, within the next few months providing people can get hold of any of it. It's an exciting time as many will finally get to see whether Intel can stack up alongside Nvidia and AMD, two conglomerates that have been in the game for longer.
As well as this announcement, Intel also outlined some of the names that will be supporting XeSS, its own version of image upscaling that is fast becoming an industry standard in gaming. Among them are giants such as Ubisoft, Kojima Productions, 505 Games, and Codemasters.
The one caveat to all this is that there is still an uncertain tech market out there. With Intel itself saying that chip shortages could go on until 2023, especially with the new coronavirus variant, there's still a chance that consumers will be leaving empty-handed. All three companies are clearly vying for the most attention with a slew of GPUs on the way, but the deficit is likely to put potential buyers back to square one unless things improve rather quickly.
Source: PC Gamer