Supply issues seem to continue to affect Intel's ambitious desktop GPU launch plans, with the Arc "Alchemist" line of desktop discrete GPUs now launching at "late Q2 or early Q3," sources tell VideoCardz. This would put the launch toward the end of June, or some time in July. This follows a similar trend with availability of notebooks powered by Arc "Alchemist" discrete GPUs, which are expected to be available in June, despite a March product launch.

A mid-year launch risks putting Intel's nascent dGPU lineup perilously close to AMD's RX 6x50 refresh, and NVIDIA's RTX 40-series "Ada Lovelace" graphics cards, expected to debut across the second half of 2022. At launch, Intel's desktop graphics card lineup will include as many as five SKUs, including the Arc A380, the Arc A580, the Arc A770, and the flagship Arc A780, which is probably a Limited Edition SKU. With the rumored performance numbers we're seeing, These SKUs have the potential to impress gamers, provided they aren't obsolete at launch by next-generation models from NVIDIA and AMD.

Last month, Intel released its Arc Alchemist lineup for mobile/laptop configurations. As expected, being the first discrete GPU that the company made, there are some hiccups here and there that happen along the way. Today, we have an interesting case of Intel Arc A350M getting a heavy performance boost with Dynamic Tuning Technology (DTT) disabled. The DTT is Intel's solution to automatically and dynamically allocate power between an Intel processor and an Intel Discrete Graphics Card to optimize performance and improve battery life. This is essentially a competing tech for AMD SmartShift and NVIDIA Dynamic Boost implementations. Thanks to a South Korean YouTuber, BullsLab, we have information that disabling DTT in drivers helps Arc 350M GPU reach higher performance targets.

He found when disabling DTT in drivers that the gaming performance improved significantly and that the Arc 350M was outputting 30-80 more frames per second. This is no slight improvement and shows that the drivers are still not yet mature. Creating a discrete graphics card is not an easy task, as noted here; however, we hope to see Intel put out more fixes in the coming weeks and hopefully end this strange behavior.Below, you can see the YouTube video with benchmarks.

CPU-Z is one of the most widespread tools for profiling and monitoring, gathering information from the system, and presenting it in a user-readable UI. Today, the application has reached another milestone with the release of the CPU-Z 2.01 version, which brings support for additional upcoming processors from AMD and Intel. One of the software highlights is the inclusion of AMD's forthcoming processor designs, codenamed Rembrandt and Raphael. These processors are what AMD is bringing to the market now and in the near future, meaning that the software ecosystem has to prepare. Additionally, CPU-Z has been updated with preliminary support for Intel's upcoming 13th Generation Raptor Lake processors, alongside Intel ARC 3/5/7 DG2 designs. CPU-Z developers also improved validation process for high-frequency overclocking submissions of over 6 GHz. The full changelog is listed below.

Download CPU-Z 2.01 here.

The recently announced Intel Arc A350M mobile graphics card is now shipping with it's recent debut in the South-Korean exclusive Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro laptop. The A350M is the entry-level Arc Alchemist skew from Intel featuring an ACM-G11 GPU with 768 shaders and 4 GB of GDDR6 video memory. This specific Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro model is also equipped with an Intel Core i5-1240P Alder Lake processor and 16 GB of LPDDR5 memory. The Intel video drivers (30.0.101.132) included with the laptop appear to have issues correctly identifying the card however newer versions are available which should address this.

The laptop was tested in various synthetic and gaming scenarios with the Arc A350M (30 W) performing anywhere from 40% to 60% faster than the NVIDIA MX450 (25 W). The Intel A350M reached a maximum boost clock of 2.2 GHz during gaming with the card offering adequate performance in eSports and older titles. The Galaxy Book2 Pro model with 32 GB of memory and a 1 TB SSD (NT950XEE-XD72S) is currently available to purchase directly from Samsung Korea for 2,520,000 KRW (2,054 USD). Intel has noted that more laptops featuring Arc Alchemist mobile graphics should be launching worldwide in the coming weeks.

Intel in March 2022 kicked off its ambitious campaign to grab a slice of the consumer graphics market, with its Arc "Alchemist" line of discrete GPUs, based on the Xe-HPG graphics architecture. The announcement mentioned an immediate availability of at least the entry-level Arc 3-series GPU models in notebooks generally available. These GPU models include the Arc A350M and Arc A370M. People on social media are beginning to ask Intel why these notebooks are nowhere in sight, and the company responded.

In response to one such query by a user, Intel Support stated that laptops with Arc will be available "by the end of the second quarter of 2022." This would put general availability in June 2022, two months from now. Interestingly, this hasn't stopped laptop manufacturers from raking in pre-orders, with the likes of the Acer Swift X and Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro up for "grabs." You can "purchase" the Swift X, but shipping dates are stated to be as late as May 23 (now pushed to June 13).

HotHardware did a video interview with Intel Fellow Tom Petersen, who briefly teased a prototype Intel Arc "Alchemist" graphics card with three 8-pin PCIe power connectors, for a total power input capability of 450 W. This does not necessarily mean that a finished product will ship with three connectors; as prototype motherboards and graphics cards are known to feature various redundant connectivity and power-input options for product developers to test capabilities. The three connectors are spaced far apart from each other, so it's likely that the board tests various combinations of power inputs. One of the three could even be a 224 W EPS instead of a 150 W PCIe. The Arc "Alchemist" 7-series desktop board that maxes out the DG2-512 silicon, has been grinding through the rumor mill for quite some time now, including PCB pictures, showing two 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

Intel's recently announced Arc "Alchemist" line of discrete gaming graphics processors consists of at least five mobile SKUs across the Arc 3, Arc 5, and Arc 7 lines; with desktop SKUs expected later this year. These are based on one of two ASICs—the DG2-128 (ACM-G11) and the DG2-512 (ACM-G10), both built on the TSMC N6 (6 nm) silicon fabrication process. Coelacanth's Dream discovered a third ASIC when digging through Intel Graphics Compiler code on GitHub, referred to as the "ACM-G12."

This silicon has exactly half the amount of number-crunching machinery as the DG2-512, and features 256 execution units (EU), or 16 Xe cores, working out to 2,048 unified shaders—double that of the DG2-128, but half that of the DG2-512. Interestingly, the Arc 5 A550M mobile GPU announced last week has specifications corresponding to this silicon, even though it was announced to be a heavily cut-down DG2-512. Intel probably figures that at some point making A550M GPUs using DG2-512 could mean cutting down perfectly functional silicon, and so it makes sense to manufacture physically smaller dies (more dies per wafer). There are no other known specs of the ACM-G12. It's quite likely given the rest of its alignment with the A550M's specs that it could feature a 128-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface.

A few days ago, Intel announced its first official discrete graphics card efforts, designed for laptops. Called the Arc Alchemist lineup, Intel has designed these SKUs to provide entry-level to high-end options covering a wide range of use cases. Today, AMD has responded with a rather exciting Tweet made by the company's @Radeon Twitter account. The company compared Intel's Arc Alchemist A370M GPU with AMD's Radeon RX 6500M mobile SKUs in the post. These GPUs are made on TSMC's N6 node, feature 4 GB GDDR6 64-bit memory, 1024 FP32 cores, and have the same configurable TDP range of 35-50 Watts.

Below, you can see AMD's benchmarks of the following select games: Hitman 3, Total War Saga: Troy, F1 2021, Strange Brigade (High), and Final Fantasy XIV. The Radeon RX 6500M GPU manages to win in all of these games, thus explaining AMD's "FTW" hashtag on Twitter. Remember that these are vendor-supplied benchmarks runs, so we have to wait for some media results to surface.

Although it hasn't been verified, it would appear that Intel might have let slip some details of its upcoming Arc A780 desktop GPU in a video where the company was showing off its Arc Control graphics card control and monitoring software. For a brief second or two, the Live Performance Monitoring part of Arc Control was shown in the video, displaying GPU and VRAM clocks for one of its upcoming GPUs, alongside the GPU power of the same card. As to the exact product, that is now being discussed on the internet, but the current consensus based on all the specs, is that it could be the Arc A780.

The reasoning behind this, is that the Arc A350M, which could in theory boost to 2,250 MHz, doesn't meet the listed GPU power of 175 W, nor does the much slower clocked Arc A770M mobile part. The VRAM clock at 1093 MHz also suggests an effective memory throughput of 17.5 Gbps, which is faster than the fastest mobile GPU according to the specs available so far. It also means that Intel is going for high-performance memory on its high-end parts, as this GPU has higher memory bandwidth than a GeForce RTX 3070, which sits at 14 Gbps. It's also possible that we're looking at a development card here and that these specs won't make it into a final product, so we'll just have to wait until this summer to see what Intel has in store for us.

XeSS is arguably the most boasted-about new graphics technology by Intel. A performance enhancement that is functionally similar to AMD FSR or NVIDIA DLSS, XeSS will instrumental in making Arc "Alchemist" GPUs offer high performance with minimal loss to image quality, especially given that Intel's first crack at premium gaming GPUs also happens to include real-time ray tracing support, to meet DirectX 12 Ultimate specs.

Intel announced that XeSS won't be debuting with the Arc 3 series mobile GPUs that launched yesterday (March 30), but instead alongside the Arc 5 and Arc 7 series slated for early-Summer (late-May to early-June). At launch, several AAA titles will be optimized for XeSS, including "Ghostwire: Tokyo," "Death Stranding," "Anvil," "Hitman III," "GRID Legends," etc.

After today's mobile Arc GPU reveal, Intel has also teased its first desktop Arc graphics card in a YouTube video that gives us a first sneak peek of its first desktop graphics card since the late 1990's. Although it's not clear which card Intel is showing off in the video, as the card simply says Intel ARC Limited Edition on the back, it's clear that Intel has gone with a simpler design than those early concepts the company was showing off a couple of years ago. Based on the animated render, we'd hazard a guess that this is a higher-end model, as it appears to have eight memory ICs, as well as a somewhat elaborate cooling system with four heatpipes.

Two fans can also be seen in the video, although the mounting appears somewhat unusual compared to most graphics cards. The back of the card is covered, but it's not obvious if this is a functional rear cover or just for looks. The card also has three DisplayPort and one HDMI outputs. However, what can't be seen in the video, is any kind of power connectors on the card, although it's unlikely that Intel has managed to make a graphics card that doesn't require an external power-input, at least not based on what is known about Intel's upcoming Arc GPUs. The video ends with a message of the new cards coming in the summer of 2022. Based on the video, it seems like we should expect Intel branded retail cards, albeit in a limited production run and most likely only in select markets. You can watch the video after the break.

Intel's Arc discrete lineup of graphics card are set to hit the notebook/laptop segment first, and today's discovery is no different. BHPhotoVideo, one of the largest US tech retailers, has posted a listing of Samsung's Galaxy Book2 Pro laptop, spotting Intel's Arc discrete graphics solution. According to the listing, this model was spotting an undisclosed Intel Arc Graphics, 2.1 GHz 12-core CPU, 16 GB of LPDDR5-6400 memory, 512 GB of NVMe PCIe Gen4 storage, 15.6-inch 1080p AMOLED display, WiFi-6E, and came in just 1.13 KG body weight. All of this is packed at 1349.99 USD, which is an early sign of the structure of laptop prices carrying Intel's Arc GPUs.

BHPhotoVideo has now taken down the website listing; however, we still have evidence thanks to the leaker, which you can see below. For more information regarding the exact SKU and more Arc Alchemist data, we have to wait for the March 30th launch.

According to Igor's Lab, Intel has listed a new product on its non-public ARK site that lists what appears to be a motherboard product with an Intel Arc GPU. The product listing is very peculiar, as it's listed as a graphics card, but the "family name" is DG2MB. It's also said to have a clock speed of 4 GHz, 16 MB of cache and a TDP of 200 W. None of this seems to add up in any sensible way and additional information provided by Igor, doesn't improve things, as the chip is using an FC-BGA16E packaging with a pin-count of 2660.

For those not familiar with Intel ARK, it's Intel's product specification website and there's a public version, as well as a version that only select Intel customers have access to and it's from the latter this information has been sourced. As to what this product could be, is anyone's guess at this point, but the MB in the model name suggests it might be some kind of embedded motherboard with an Intel CPU and GPU, possibly for some kind of NUC product.

[Editor's note: We have posted our HYTE Y60 review here.]

HYTE, the new PC components, peripherals, and lifestyle brand of iBUYPOWER, today launched the new Y60 mid-tower PC case. Taking a new angle on design, the Y60 boasts a style unlike any other case available on the market.

The uniquely constructed Y60 ATX case features a three-part, bezel-less, tempered glass front and side panel that provides an unobstructed internal view from a left, right, or center orientation. When the glass panels are removed, chamfered molding on the ceiling and floor of the case draw the eye inward, creating a modern aesthetic and allowing the system to be displayed in an open-air format. Users will have the option to choose from three colorways, white and black, black and black, and red and black, to best fit the aesthetic of their setup.

In-person events are slowly getting back together, and Intel is one of the first to grab tech media's attention with the Intel Vision 2022 conference announcement. Schedule for two days in a row, May 10th and May 11th, Intel's 2022 Vision conference looks like a teaser for some exciting news. The company is expected to present some business insights, hold keynotes, breakout sessions, technology showcases, demos, and exhibitions from sponsors and partners. It requires registration, which is a paid fee of $899 until April 11th, and $1499 after that for in-person seats; however, it is free for digital visitors.

Earlier today, we reported about Intel's plans to release Arc Alchemist discrete graphics card lineup sometime between May and June, so this could be one of the days the company selects for official product launch. We are still not sure about that, so please take those thoughts with a grain of salt. Be sure to tune in and see what Intel plans to do in the future.

It seems that someone at Intel forgot to press "post" on the company's promised day-0 driver update for one of this year's most anticipated games - Elden Ring. The company previously announced a partnership with Elden Ring developer FromSoftware in the development of an updated driver that wold give Intel-based Elden Ring players streamlined performance and a (hopefully) bug-free experience when it comes to graphics rendering. But Elden Ring's launch day of February 24th has come and gone - and Intel is mum on where exactly its updated driver lies. For now, the latest available Intel graphics driver stands at version 101.1121 - released in November last year.

It may be the case that the driver development hit an unexpected snag, or perhaps Intel has simply opted to delay the driver's launch until there are actually some discrete-level graphics cards available for purchase - the company's initial Arc Alchemist lineup is expected to be announced and launched later this month. That would make sense - especially considering how a driver update this close to release might include some interesting data on the upcoming graphics cards that could be pursued by data miners. Even so, it doesn't seem like a good PR move for Intel to have loudly promised an updated driver and then fail to release it - especially as Intel's uphill battle in the discrete GPU market is just beginning. Perhaps the driver developers are having too much fun with the critically and consumer-acclaimed latest installment from FromSoftware?

SiSoftware put out the mother lode of information on Intel's upcoming Arc "Alchemist" gaming graphics card series, along with OpenCL compute performance of the entry-level Arc A380. The Arc series model numbering is "A" (Alchemist) followed by a number series. The A300 series makes up the entry-mainstream; the A500 series makes up the mid-performance segment; and the A700 series leads the pack with high-end SKUs. The "Alchemist" GPUs are built on the 7 nm silicon fabrication node at TSMC, the N7.

The A300 series is based on the smaller "Alchemist" series dies, with 128 EUs (execution units), which work out to 1,024 programmable shaders. The A500 series and A700 series appear to be carved out from the larger silicon. The A500 series has roughly 384 EU or 3,072 shaders. The top-dog A700 series has all 512 EU or 4,096 shaders enabled. Intel is tapping into industry-standard GDDR6 for dedicated graphics memory. The A300-series SKUs typically have 6 GB of 14 Gbps-rated memory across a 96-bit wide memory bus, for 192 GB/s of bandwidth. The A500 series parts have 12 GB of 16 Gbps-rated memory across a 192-bit bus, for 384 GB/s of bandwidth. The top A700 series maxes out the 256-bit memory bus with 16 GB of memory at 16 Gbps data-rate, for 512 GB/s bandwidth.

Intel has recently unveiled its plans for their 3rd generation Celestial Arc graphics cards to compete with NVIDIA and AMD in the "Ultra Enthusiast" GPU market. The Arc Celestial GPU series is now scheduled to launch in 2024 with the architecture currently under active development. These cards will target future flagship cards from NVIDIA however in 2023/2024 we should see the launch of 2nd generation Arc Battlemage products that may narrow the gap. The timeline Intel shared indicates a launch date of 2024+ for Celestial GPUs so the launch date may slip into 2025. This was previously the year which Intel was rumored to launch 4th generation Arc Druid graphics cards so it remains to be seen if this official timeline will hold.

At Intel's 2022 Investor Meeting, Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger and Intel's business leaders outlined key elements of the company's strategy and path for long-term growth. Intel's long-term plans will capitalize on transformative growth during an era of unprecedented demand for semiconductors. Among the presentations, Intel announced product roadmaps across its major business units and key execution milestones, including: Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics, Intel Foundry Services, Software and Advanced Technology, Network and Edge, Technology Development, More: For more from Intel's Investor Meeting 2022, including the presentations and news, please visit the Intel Newsroom and Intel.com's Investor Meeting site.

Intel put out a clear, close-up picture of its Arc "Alchemist" gaming graphics card engineering sample. This matches with a picture of the PCB rear shot that surfaced in a report by "Moore's Law is Dead." The picture reveals a PCB that's about 3/4th the length of the cooling solution, with the remainder of the cooler's length being used to directly vent airflow from the back.

The PCB reveals a rectangular pad for the GPU, which corresponds with that of the larger "Alchemist" GPU. This is surrounded by what look like eight GDDR6 memory pads for a 256-bit wide memory interface; at least 10 VRM phases of an unknown configuration; and a power input configuration that's made up of one each of 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power connectors (capable of delivering 300 W including slot power). The PCB shows traces that connect the GPU to all 16 PCI-Express lanes of the PCIe finger. Display outputs include three full-size DisplayPorts and an HDMI. This particular variant of "Alchemist" is rumored to feature 512 execution units (4,096 unified shaders), and at least in SiSoft SANDRA, it allegedly outperforms the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti "Ampere."

Mesh shader is a relatively new concept of a programmable geometric shading pipeline, which promises to simplify the whole graphics rendering pipeline organization. NVIDIA introduced this concept with Turing back in 2018, and AMD joined with RDNA2. Today, thanks to the finds of Phoronix, we have gathered information that Intel's DG2 GPU will carry support for mesh shaders and bring it under Vulkan API. For starters, the difference between mesh/task and traditional graphics rendering pipeline is that the mesh edition is much simpler and offers higher scalability, bandwidth reduction, and greater flexibility in the design of mesh topology and graphics work. In Vulkan, the current mesh shader state is NVIDIA's contribution called the VK_NV_mesh_shader extension. The below docs explain it in greater detail:

Vulkan API documentationThis extension provides a new mechanism allowing applications to generate collections of geometric primitives via programmable mesh shading. It is an alternative to the existing programmable primitive shading pipeline, which relied on generating input primitives by a fixed function assembler as well as fixed function vertex fetch.

There are new programmable shader types—the task and mesh shader—to generate these collections to be processed by fixed-function primitive assembly and rasterization logic. When task and mesh shaders are dispatched, they replace the core pre-rasterization stages, including vertex array attribute fetching, vertex shader processing, tessellation, and geometry shader processing.

Raja Koduri, Intel's Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group, has responded via Twitter to an open letter from PC Gamer that addressed the nightmare-like state for GPU pricing and availability, classifying it as "a huge issue for PC gamers and the industry at large". Intel says they are looking to put millions of Arc GPUs into PC Gamer's hands as the company fast approaches the end of the reaffirmed Q1 launch window for its new high-performance discrete graphics products. The reading on this is that Intel plans to add to the available mass of GPUs that consumers can buy, thus alleviating the strain from overwhelming consumer demand, and bringing about a much healthier market - with real and acceptable pricing for graphics products.

That Intel plans to ship millions of Arc GPUs to consumers is no surprise; the company definitely wants to recoup its investment in developing consumer-oriented, high-performance graphics architectures. However, any claims or expectations of improved GPU supply in the market should be taken with a grain of salt, as the bottleneck for graphics products stands not at the GPU design level, but at the semiconductor manufacturing one: namely, there are only so many GPU wafers that graphics chips designers can secure from foundry company TSMC, which also serves customers like Apple, Qualcomm, and other technology industry giants.

Intel's upcoming Arc Alchemist lineup of discrete graphics cards generates a lot of attention from consumers. Leaks of these cards' performance and detailed specifications appear more and more as we enter the countdown to the launch day, which is sometime in Q1 of this year. Today, we managed to see a slide from @9950pro on Twitter that shows the laptop memory configuration of Intel's DG2 GPU. As the picture suggests, we can see that the top-end SKU1 with 512 EUs supports a 16 GB capacity of GDDR6 memory that runs at 16 Gbps speeds. The memory runs on a 256-bit bus and generates 512 GB/s bandwidth while having eight VRAM modules present.

When it comes to SKU2, which is a variant with 384 EUs, this configuration supports six VRAM modules on a 192-bit bus, running at 16 Gbps speeds. They generate a total capacity of 12 GBs and a bandwidth of 384 GB/s. We have SKU3 DG2 GPU going down the stack, featuring 256 EUs, four VRAM modules on a 128-bit bus, 8 GB capacity, and a 256 GB/s bandwidth. And last but not least, the smallest DG2 variants come in the form of SKU4 and SKU5, feating 128 EUs and 96 EUs, respectively. Intel envisions these lower-end SKUs with two VRAM modules on a 64-bit bus, and this time slower GDDR6 memory running at 14 Gbps. They are paired with 4 GB of total capacity, and the total bandwidth comes down to 112 GB/s.

Intel's Arc Alchemist discrete lineup of graphics cards is scheduled for launch this quarter. We are getting some performance benchmarks of the DG2-512EU silicon, representing the top-end Xe-HPG configuration. Thanks to a discovery of a famous hardware leaker TUM_APISAK, we have a measurement performed in the SiSoftware database that shows Intel's Arc Alchemist GPU with 4096 cores and, according to the report from the benchmark, just 12.8 GB of GDDR6 VRAM. This is just an error on the report, as this GPU SKU should be coupled with 16 GB of GDDR6 VRAM. The card was reportedly running at 2.1 GHz frequency. However, we don't know if this represents base or boost speeds.

When it comes to actual performance, the DG2-512EU GPU managed to score 9017.52 Mpix/s, while something like NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti managed to get 8369.51 Mpix/s in the same test group. Comparing these two cards in floating-point operations, Intel has an advantage in half-float, double-float, and quad-float tests, while NVIDIA manages to hold the single-float crown. This represents a 7% advantage for Intel's GPU, meaning that Arc Alchemist has the potential for standing up against NVIDIA's offerings.

For a significant period, Intel's Next Unit of Computing (NUC) series has featured soldered processors on the PC's motherboard. However, according to the latest leaks from Twitter hardware leaker @9550pro, we have a potential Alder Lake-based NUC featuring desktop processor versions and a dedicated LGA1700 socket. As the leaked image shows, it looks like Intel's NUC 12 Extreme edition will feature an LGA1700 socket that features support for desktop-class of Alder Lake processors. If this leak is correct, we could see a compelling NUC solution filled with Intel-only processors, meaning an Alder Lake CPU and Arc Alchemist discrete graphics card.

There is room for PCIe expansion, which means that theoretically, you could connect any GPU to the mainboard. However, it is natural to assume that Intel could force their own GPU SKUs to launch this mini PC. We have to wait and see what Intel presents at tomorrow's CES 2022 event for more information.