Intel's Arc GPUs are still on the road when it comes to next-gen offerings Battlemage and Celestial, plus the Alchemist GPUs just got a big upgrade that ensures they run much faster with some of the best PC games .
Raja Koduri provided updates on a number of topics in an interview by Gadgets 360 (Opens in a new tab) (G360), in which Intel's graphics guru gave us firm confirmation that the giant chipset is still sticks to its planned future GPU roadmap. . That is, releasing Battlemage in 2023 and Celestial in 2024 (although third-gen cards could possibly move to 2025).
G360 asked, "Are you going to go ahead with the roadmap for Battlemage and Celestial?"
To which Koduri replied, "Yes, absolutely."
G360 also asked Koduri about optimizing for the "Top 100 Games," which are still DX9 and DX11, with older titles being an area where Arc graphics drivers have been below average, and the GXNUMX executive Intel noted that in this regard: “I think you should see a big update before Christmas.
And indeed, just a few days after that interview, Intel released a new driver update that contains the promised improvements, and these are huge performance gains.
With Arc driver version 31.0.101.3959, we are talking about major improvements for League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (hit games on DX9), as well as DOTA 2 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX11). Counter-Strike saw a 77% increase in resolution to 1080p, for example, which is pretty incredible, and League of Legends saw a still very substantial 37% increase (over the Arc pilot back in October).
Analysis: A promising GPU path ahead?
As for the roadmap, it's good to hear that Koduri sounds very positive about the upcoming Battlemage and Celestial graphics cards - his answer is unequivocal, although he's not ready to confirm Battlemage for next year. Of course, given the release of Alchemist, and any hardware release schedule in general, to be fair, it would be foolish to start making any concrete promises at this point.
The other good news here is that when Battlemage arrives, we can expect a huge jump in performance not only from the generational gains brought by the new hardware, but also from the continually refined Arc controllers.
This latest driver is still in beta, which means it's just for testing at the moment and can be a little weird, but the final version will no doubt be coming soon, bringing a huge performance boost with some games that have been pain points. real for Intel. . This follows a bunch of driver updates that have already brought a lot of improvements, for example gains of up to 20% in a month with the flagship A770 GPU.
If this kind of progress continues, and works to fix the issues and provide better overall compatibility across a variety of games, along with increasing frame rates, Intel will be in much better shape to challenge Nvidia and AMD. . There's a definite opportunity at the lower end of the market, with Nvidia the king of the GPU hill steadily rising above the budget arena.
Intel already has around 4-5% market share in the world of discrete GPUs, it was recently heard, and that could well grow to double digits if Battlemage weaves in ever-stronger frame rate sorcery. . Furthermore, if the next-generation RDNA 3 products also come out strong and bolster AMD's market share, perhaps Nvidia's constant 70%-90% hold on the desktop graphics card sphere could finally be broken.
Today's best graphics card deals
Via Wccftech (Opens in a new tab)
