Intel is seemingly planning to announce its Arc Battlemage GPUs in less than a week, starting with the affordable models. Store availability and reviews will come about a week later.
According to Videocardz, Intel is set to announce its upcoming Battlemage GPUs next week, on December 3. This will be followed by the official launch and publication of Intel’s Limited Edition card reviews on December 12. After which, reviews of board partners’ models will get the green light for December 13.
- December 3: announcement.
- December 12: launch and reviews of Intel Limited Edition cards.
- December 13: board partner cards reviews.
To begin with, Team Blue is seemingly launching two models from its lower-mid-range: Arc B580 and Arc B570 GPUs featuring the G21 chip. The former is rumoured to offer RX 7600 XT-levels of performance, packing 20 Xe2 cores clocked at 2.8GHz alongside 12Gb of 19Gbps GDDR6 memory. As for B570, the gap shouldn’t be that wide if the claimed 18 Xe2 core GPU is correct.
While such a scattered schedule is nothing new as we saw it from Intel’s competition too, I wonder why the brand is doing the opposite when it comes to product launch orders. At least recently, both AMD and Nvidia preferred opening the festivities with their flagships or at least high-end models. The idea is to set the tone of the lineup by showing the capabilities of their new generation, while encouraging those with deep pockets to get in there first.
For some reason, Intel is thinking otherwise, starting with the affordable B500-tier GPUs instead of B700. To be clear, even the B700 range isn’t expected to offer RTX 4080-class performance, but for Battlemage products, these are likely as fast as they get.
| Arc B570 | Arc B580 | Arc A580 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Battlemage | Battlemage | Alchemist |
| GPU | BGM-G21 | BGM-G21 | ACM-G12 |
| Xe-Cores | 18 Xe2 | 20 Xe2 | 24 Xe |
| Clock | TBC | 2.8GHz | 1.7GHz |
| Memory | TBC | 12GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Mem bus | TBC | 192-bit | 256-bit |
| Mem speed | TBC | 19Gbps | 16Gbps |
| Mem Bandwidth | TBC | 456GB/s | 512GB/s |
| Interface | PCIe 5.0×8 | PCIe 5.0×8 | PCIe 4.0×16 |
| Launch date | December 12, 2024 | December 12, 2024 | October 2023 |
| MSRP | TBC | ~$249 | $179 |
As things go, Intel is likely to face only AMD this generation since Nvidia will probably focus on high-margin top-tier products again. This means more chances to build up user confidence in the Arc brand, opening the way for upcoming Celestial and Druid architectures. It seems that Team Blue has no intent to let down its new GPU roadmap with plans going at least up to 2026.
