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Intel to Tease Arc "Battlemage" Discrete GPU in December?

Good points, but I'd trust them to support their products as much as the next company. Nvidia drivers have actually gotten worse the last few years. They seem to have a completely botched unusable driver every now and again or some good chunk of users who can't use them for some reason or another. Nvidia is pushing it's latest drivers for a security reason, but I can't update my 4080 laptop to those or the screen will flicker nonstop (the drivers included a fix to this problem that I never had until they "fixed" it lol).

The thing with entry level is that you have a huge variety of shoppers, including from system vendors ala ibuypower, cyperpower, etc. that either don't know what they're shopping for or can't afford to be picky either way. If they even look at reviews (which it's hard to get some people to read reviews anyway), and the cards review well, especially on performance/price, then yes I think people will buy them. I think if you look at pre-built buyers out there (and a good chunk of DIYers) in the budget-build and even some mid-range...they're really just trying to get the best thing they can get for the price. They don't really care about Nvidia/AMD/Intel and honestly they shouldn't as brand loyalty can lead to bad places lol. So (here we go with the if statements again)...IF Intel can launch Battlemage at a good perf/price than I believe they will sell well. Nvidia owns the top-end and for years AMD could take most of the mid-range or low end. They could both say "well it's us or nobody" and that's their prerogative, but that's where a third vendor can really shake things up....assuming again that the if-statements are met.
I feel that. My razer blade stealth has a funny new bug where selecting an app to run on integrated graphics does nothing. The nvidia driver will decide what does and doesnt run on the GPU, screw whatever filters you have installed.

The result: CIV V is stuck on the integrated GPU and the brave browser is on the Nvidia chip. Only solution has been to downgrade drivers.

If intel manages to launch battlemage with no driver regressions from Alchemist, and has substantial improvements in raw power, they may have a winner. But based on meteor lake, I wouldnt be holding my breath. Meteor lake's XE2 drivers were utterly broken and even now are less stable then alchemist.
 
The obsession with Battlemage aiming for high end is doomed to disappoint and people should really be likening this to the RX 8000 series. They don't have to make huge waves for Battlemage to be a success.

Even matching the tail of high end for this generation (7800XT, 4070 SUPER) for a far lower price is enough, especially for someone with interests such as myself. I don't care about flavor-blasting my games into Mega Super Duper Awesome Quality at 4K, I just need something to drive games at 1440p and Index HMD resolutions. Top-tier Battlemage/RDNA4 could achieve that for me, and I imagine a lot of people looking to buy OEM/SI gaming systems will notice the FPS charts don't look super different but the price sure does.
 
Intel has fallen behind before and come back.
They trade blows and it comes and goes.
Exactly. And ARC is not crap. They had a rough, but not terrible, start. The drivers are just wonderful at this point.

The obsession with Battlemage aiming for high end is doomed to disappoint
But that's it, they're not. Intel is aiming at the midrange market sector, where MOST people are buying at. They're at that level now and the A770/A750/A580 are very good value buys.
 
If intel manages to launch battlemage with no driver regressions from Alchemist, and has substantial improvements in raw power, they may have a winner. But based on meteor lake, I wouldnt be holding my breath. Meteor lake's XE2 drivers were utterly broken and even now are less stable then alchemist.

Xe2 is lunar lake which did quite well. Meteor lake is Xe which is alchemist.
 
I will wait and see. Who knows what we are going to get but Intel hasn't exactly been hitting home runs lately with there products.
 
This just shows how long it takes to make a proper graphic card.

Intel really needs manpower and knowledge for software quality and bug hunting in existing products. Maybe also proper hardware designers who knows about software.
 
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