Intel is finally kicking off its ad campaign for its high-end graphics cards. Formally known as DG2, Intel has branded its graphics cards as Arc. With the announcement of their new branding, they also gave us a launch window for their new Arc lineup, albeit still a bit vague, it’s slated for some time in Q1 of 2022.
Intel states that they will deliver “scalability and compute efficiency with advanced graphics features. Alchemist, the first generation of Intel Arc products, will feature hardware-based ray tracing and artificial intelligence-driven super sampling, and offer full support for DirectX 12 Ultimate.”
Today marks a key moment in the graphics journey we started just a few years ago. The launch of the Intel Arc brand and the reveal of future hardware generations signifies Intel’s deep and continued commitment to gamers and creators everywhere. We have teams doing incredible work to ensure we deliver first-class and frictionless experiences when these products are available early next year.
–Roger Chandler, Intel vice president and general manager of Client Graphics Products and Solutions
Intel AI driven super sampling tech in the works
Code named Alchemist, Intel’s first Arc branded graphics cards, aren’t coming empty-handed. Intel also announced that they are joining the Radeon, NVIDIA, up-scaling arms race. So Intel is joining the graphics card battle and the up-scaling war at the same time? With their first attempt? They aren’t messing about; it’s go big or go home from team blue.
Intel’s artificial intelligence-driven up-scaling technology will bear the same name as their high-end graphics card lineup, “Arc.” Yes. Barely touched on but included in the Arc announcement, Intel confirmed they are working on “artificial intelligence-driven supersampling.” Beyond that, not much more is known yet. We’ll have to wait a bit more for a more in-depth look at their spin on the up-scaling tech. AMD has released their version recently, and it’s quite good for a first attempt, and I am looking forward to further revisions, as NVIDIA was very successful with their 2.0 version of their similar DLSS tech.
Intel Arc generations
| Code Name | Release Date |
|---|---|
| Alchemist | Q1 2022 |
| Battlemage | not yet announced |
| Celestial | not yet announced |
| Druid | not yet announced |
More to come
With the new branding now out of the way, I look forward to Intel giving us a deeper dive into their new Arc Architecture and more information on their AI-driven up-scaling tech. They did give us a taste of what’s to come at the end of the video. At the end of the announcement, they had some game-play footage from a small selection of games captured using their new high-end graphics cards, with the disclaimer that it’s running on “Intel Arc pre-production silicon.” Honestly, IMO the footage didn’t look that impressive, but it’s still early days.
I’m looking forward to finding out if Intel will take AMD’s path or will they take NVIDIA’s path when it comes to how open-source friendly their drivers are. I guess we will find out soon enough.