Friday, March 29th 2024
Intel Arc "Battlemage" Xe2-HPG BMG-10 & BMG-21 GPUs Discovered in Shipping Manifest
Speculated lower-end Intel second generation Arc GPUs popped up via SiSoftware Sandra database entries around mid-March—evaluation samples are likely in the hands of trusted hardware partners. Yesterday, momomo_us happened upon another interesting shipping manifest, following a series of AMD-related leaks. The latest list reveals five "Battlemage" products—three utilizing the BMG-21 GPU, and the remaining two being based on the BMG-10 design. These identifiers have appeared in older leaks, although the latter has been viewed in place sight—chez Intel Malaysia's Failure Analysis Lab.
Previous leaks suggest that these second generation Arc models (Xe2) reside within a "High-Performance Graphics" (HPG) discrete GPU family—the Xe2-HPG BMG-10 range is likely targeting an "enthusiast" market segment, while the Xe2-HPG BMG-21 tier is rumored to offer mid-tier performance. Intel staffers have expressed confidence about a possible late 2024 launch window. Back in January, Tom "TAP" Petersen revealed that the Arc hardware team had already moved onto third-gen "Celestial" GPU endeavors: "I'd say about 30% of our engineers are working on Battlemage, mostly on the software side because our hardware team is on the next thing." The first-gen deck has not been cleared fully it seems—the Alchemist family could be joined by two new variants in the near future.
Sources:
momomo_us Tweet, TechRadar, Wccftech
Previous leaks suggest that these second generation Arc models (Xe2) reside within a "High-Performance Graphics" (HPG) discrete GPU family—the Xe2-HPG BMG-10 range is likely targeting an "enthusiast" market segment, while the Xe2-HPG BMG-21 tier is rumored to offer mid-tier performance. Intel staffers have expressed confidence about a possible late 2024 launch window. Back in January, Tom "TAP" Petersen revealed that the Arc hardware team had already moved onto third-gen "Celestial" GPU endeavors: "I'd say about 30% of our engineers are working on Battlemage, mostly on the software side because our hardware team is on the next thing." The first-gen deck has not been cleared fully it seems—the Alchemist family could be joined by two new variants in the near future.
23 Comments on Intel Arc "Battlemage" Xe2-HPG BMG-10 & BMG-21 GPUs Discovered in Shipping Manifest
Intel BMG-50, Ma Duece
when?
And start working on Vulkan drivers already.
‘Argh, me manifest is lost to davy jones locker’
But a 2 company system does not work for competition really, they dont even have to do illegal price agreement between eachother, they can just look at eachother and offer the same performance for the same price, which is kinda what is going on atm.
We do need a 3rd player, GO FOR IT INTEL.
Hopefully Intel pushes hard on universally compatible features as that will be a huge boon to themselves and the market as a whole.
In a scenario where costs continue to rise, if AMD and Nvidia were solely dependent on the gaming market for investment and GPU development, the outcome could be either significantly higher GPU prices or inertia on both sides due to insufficient capital.
I'm more excited about RDNA4 frankly, as we are looking at raster between 7900XT and 7900XTX in a 8700 class gpu..
Right along with Apple.
So the most they can do is play a game of balancing their use of limited TSMC resources to make AI GPUs, gaming GPUs, mobile CPUs, desktop CPUs, and/or server CPUs. Like any good company, they'll strike that balance based on a combination of what is likely to be most profitable for them and what will grow critical market segments. Both of those will likely be slanted towards AI, and server.
The disruption comes late this year when Intel 4 and Intel 3 are fully online, and again in 2025 when 20A/18A are up and running. That adds more supply and capacity to top tier silicon manufacturing, and breaks TSMCs monopoly on this space.
Even if Battlemage doesn't move past 4070 level of performance, nothing says that AMD or Nvidia can't use Intel 3 for their own chips. This would mean TSMC would have more free capacity, which one or the other could use to make more GPUs.
This is old now, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some some next gen Nvidia chips coming out on Intel 3. The timing was about right for Blackwell (5000 series) :
www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-ceo-intel-test-chip-results-for-next-gen-process-look-good
TSMC has multiple nodes and with high capacity. It's not surprising that they attract most orders.Not going to happen any time soon. Perhaps towards 2027 for one or two lower end chips.
They have to provide the drivers so consumers know they aren't wasting money on a dead product. And they have to fix stuff in time and form when people report it.
It's basically telling you that in the next 2 1/2 years, Intel will double the number of chips they can produce. So saying half of them will be Intel 7 / 14 - well that's what they use to make chipsets and IO dies.
But I question that slide's authenticity. For one, they show Sierra Forest and Granite Rapids as Intel 7. They've already been demo'd and they are Intel 3, with the IO die on Intel 7.
In any case it just reinforces what I said earlier about Intel bringing new nodes and fabs to bear on supply constrained markets like GPUs. The key to lowering prices on GPUs, CPUs, etc. - like anything - is increasing production.
AMD are still in the "nothing newer than 2080 Ti exists" kinda phase. 7600 XT for 300+ bucks, 7800 XT still for $500, 7900 XTX is still not under 700 bucks... "Appear strong when you're weak" by Sun Tzu only works if they don't know you're weak. But everyone knows. And it sucks.
Yes RT which is barely OK on a 4070 anyway in variety of games though. RT is cool but it isn't the top-notch gameplay you can get. It is in most cases 1080p and that is it.