We’ll have to wait for next-gen to see if Intel goes after NVIDIA’s lunch money.
When we reviewed the Intel Arc B580, we remarked at that time that we were hopeful Intel would launch a bigger version of that product. The Arc B580 has solid performance (at least, as long as you pair it with a fast CPU) and reasonable power efficiency, but it’s a relatively small GPU and simply can’t compete on performance terms with enthusiast-focused cards from AMD and NVIDIA. Unfortunately, it seems like we’ll have to wait until at least Celestial before we see any chips that challenge higher performance tiers.
We say that because highly-accurate Intel leaker Jaykihn has confirmed that BMG-G31, the long-awaited « Big Battlemage » GPU, was indeed canceled as rumored. In fact, according to Jaykihn, it was canceled way back in Q3 of last year, meaning that it was already decided that it would never be a thing for months before we even got our hands on the Arc B580.
