wccftech -
Leak/Rumor: Intel’s ARC Alchemist Graphics Card Rumors Point to Three GPUs Aiming High-End & Entry-Level Gaming Market, Top Die Close To RTX 3070 Ti
“Brand new details regarding the Intel ARC Alchemist lineup of gaming graphics cards have been leaked by Moore's Law is Dead. The new leaks cover the performance and positioning of various GPU configurations within the ARC lineup that is launching in Q1 2022.
Intel will have at least three configurations of ARC Alchemist GPUs ready for launch in Q1 2022. These will include two configurations based on the top 512 EU die and one configuration based on the 128 EU die. Although there are more GPU configs that we have seen in leaks, it looks like those may be used in future products though that cannot be confirmed.
The top Alchemist 512 EU variant has just one configuration listed so far and that utilizes the full die with 4096 cores, 256-bit bus interface, and up to 16 GB GDDR6 memory featuring a 16 Gbps clock though 18 Gbps cannot be ruled out as per the rumor.
The Xe-HPG Alchemist 512 EU chip is suggested to feature clocks of around 2.2 - 2.5 GHz though we don't know if these are the average clocks or the maximum boost clocks. Let's assume that it's the max clock speed and in that case, the card would deliver up to 18.5 TFLOPs FP32 compute which is 40% more than the RX 6700 XT but 9% lower than the NVIDIA RTX 3070.
In a speculative measure of performance, MLID states that the TFLOPs make no sense for comparison as performance scales differently respective to the architecture, not the FLOPs performance. The gaming graphics card is pretty much expected to be faster than the RX 6700 XT & RTX 3070 at this point but with work ongoing on the driver suite, the performance is expected to improve further.
Also, it is stated that Intel's initial TDP target was 225-250W but that's been upped to around 275W now. We can expect a 300W variant with dual 8-pin connectors too if Intel wants to push its clocks even further.
Moving on, we have the Intel Xe-HPG Alchemist 384 GPU which will be a cut-down variant of the 512 EU die. The 384 EU chip will feature 3072 cores, up to 12 GB GDDR6 memory, and a 192-bit bus interface though Intel could tune it up to 256-bit bus feature an 8 GB GDDR6 memory capacity. The card would also feature a TDP of around 200W and is expected to feature performance NVIDIA RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 Ti.
The 384 EU GPU is expected to feature a 16 MB smart cache, respectively. Since the GPU is pretty much a cut-down model, we will get to see clocks over the 2 GHz mark.
Then lastly, we have the Intel Xe-HPG Alchemist 128 EU parts. The top config is once again a full-fat SKU with 1024 cores, a 64-bit bus interface, and up to 8 GB GDDR6 memory. The cut-down variant will come with 96 EUs or 768 cores and a 4 GB GDDR6 memory featured across a 64-bit bus interface. The chip will also feature a clock speed of around 2.2 - 2.5 GHz and have a sub 75W power consumption which means we will be looking at connector-less graphics cards for the entry-level segment.
Performance is expected to land between the GeForce GTX 1650 and GTX 1650 SUPER but with raytracing capabilities. One big advantage that Intel could have over AMD and Intel is that with these cards, they might enter the sub-$250 US market which has been completely abandoned in the current generation of cards. The GeForce RTX 3050 series only got a laptop release so far with RTX 3060 serving the entry-level Ampere segment at $329 US while the RX 6600 is expected to be AMD's entry-level solution for around $300 US.
This GPU will be very similar to the DG1 GPU-based discrete SDV board however Alchemist will have a more improved architecture design and definitely more performance uplift over the first-gen Xe GPU architecture. This lineup is definitely going to be aimed at the entry-level desktop discrete market based on the specifications.
Based on the timeline, the Xe-HPG Alchemist lineup will compete against NVIDIA's Ampere & AMD RDNA 2 GPUs since both companies aren't expected to launch their next-gen parts by the very end of 2022. NVIDIA and AMD are expected to release refreshes in early 2022 so that might give Intel's new lineup some competition but based on current performance expectations, the refreshed may not bring drastic performance differences to the lineup.”
My thoughts: The DOI on this leak is 24 Sep 2021 20:26 EDT. It adds some information about performance and pricing. Full details concerning relative performance compared to NVIDIA/AMD are in the article.