Intel’s Alchemist is Intel’s answer to NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon


Intel joins the GPU Race!

Source: Intel

The Intel Alchemist is the first dedicated GPU from Intel under the Intel Arc series of dedicated GPUs. Since we mentioned it is a “dedicated” GPU, you can purchase it separately to run your AMD-based computer, or Intel-based computer, the same way you could for AMD-NVIDIA combo, or AMD-AMD combo, or Intel-AMD combo or Intel-NVIDIA combo (that’s a lot of choices, we just listed it here for the heck of it).

The GPU is formally called the “Intel DG2 discrete graphics card” and is based on the Intel Xe HPG microarchitecture as well as TSMC’s 6nm process. According to Intel, the performance should be similar to the GeForce RTX3070 in theory, or at least in raw computations.

Other mentioned features include real-time ray tracing and “AI Accelerated Super Sampling” upscaling tech that will compete against NVIDIA’s DLSS and AMD’s FidelityFX upscaling technology. Intel also revealed there will be more GPUs for the Intel Arc series, these have codenames like: “Battlemage” “Celestial” and “Druid”, which are all alphabetically ordered and has a fantasy RPG theme.

The GPU, initially to be released this year, was postponed to 2022, during the first quarter.

Having the blue team join the GPU wars is certainly a refresh from the perpetual war between the reds and the greens. Here’s hope to seeing the Green team join the CPU wars as well, but that’s wishful thinking (for now at least).

For now, let’s just hope the prices are actually competitive and affordable, as Intel has a habit of making their CPUs more expensive than the competition but offers slightly inferior specs. Hope not with this one.

Source: PCGamer, PCGamer (2) Ars Technica