Nvidia is almost certainly the head honcho of the graphics card world, but the scales may be tipped in another company's favor come next year. With tech giants Intel, which is essentially being dubbed "team blue," getting ready to launch its Arc "Alchemist" GPU in Q2 2022, there's quite a bit of buzz around how well it could perform, especially among "team green" and long-time rivals AMD, aka "team red". What most will be wondering is what the final specs will be and how well it will stack up against the competition, if it can. Well, there has been a new benchmark test that's been conducted which does seem to show some good signs.
According to a recent report from Tom's Hardware, which itself cites a tweet, it seems that at least one of the upcoming Intel DG2 cards will be able to take on some of the big leagues in the industry, mainly Nvidia. A benchmark test being conducted on the 2016 game Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation shows the specific GPU tested may very well be on par with the likes of the RTX 3070, or 3070 Ti, with even a slight possibility of it being up there with the RTX 3080. This means that, whichever card it is that was being used, has the potential to sit right up there with some of the top-end products.
This also matches with what was discussed not that long ago. Back in October, a leak suggested the Intel Alchemist could take on the RTX 3070 Ti, and this latest benchmark test does show that this may be the case, after all. Of course, there are some provisos that need to be stipulated, which the report does warn readers about. The most notable thing is that the specific DG2 card is not mention, so it's hard to pinpoint exactly which model was tested. The report goes on to say that the Intel GPU was tested on an i9 processor and 32 GB of RAM, which is not that common.
That's not to say the test isn't worth something. There have been a couple of early Intel Arc benchmark tests in the past, which admittedly were based on what the hardware was, as well as the current state of the drivers, at the time. Either way, while it could be argued that it's not a wholly solid test, the results still suggest that the Alchemist could be a winner.
Of course, that's all well and good if anyone will be able to get hold of it in the first place. With the tech shortages expected to rage on until 2023, Intel is only going to find itself in the same position as Nvidia and AMD, in that it can put out as many products as it wants, but it won't do much good if customers can't procure any of it.
Source: Tom's Hardware