We’ve known about Intel’s Battlemage graphics cards for a few years, but in 2024, details are starting to emerge about the release date, specs, and performance.
Despite a rocky start, Intel’s Arc GPUs are now among the best graphics cards you can buy. Targeting budget PC gamers, Intel has established itself as a major player in gaming graphics cards, and all eyes are on Team Blue with its next generation of GPUs, codenamed Battlemage.
We know Battlemage GPUs are coming, and Intel has slowly been dropping hints about the graphics cards over the past year. Although we’re still waiting on an official release date, specs, and pricing details for Battlemage GPUs, there’s a lot we can piece together already.Intel Battlemage: specs
Intel hasn’t confirmed any specs for its Battlemage GPUs yet, but the rumor mill hasn’t been quiet about the hardware these GPUs could pack. Originally, leakers like RedGamingTech claimed the flagship card would come with 64 Xe cores — double what’s available on the A770 we have now, and with an entirely new architecture in tow. The latest speculation is a little bit different, however.
At the beginning of the year, RedGamingTech revised their rumor, saying that the flagship GPU would come with 56 Xe cores. That’s still a massive bump over the A770. In addition, the leaker claims the card can reach clock speeds of up to 3GHz and come with a massive 112MB of L2 cache.
What really stands out about the leak is the Adamantine cache, however. This is a form of cache that Intel has developed for CPUs, and it’s not dissimilar from AMD’s 3D V-Cache — basically, you stack a bunch of extra cache on the die. It’s what you’d call a “Level 4” cache. It’s slow by cache standards, but RedGamingTech says Intel plans on packing a massive 512MB of Adamantine cache on the flagship chip.
In addition to the model with 56 Xe Cores, the leakers say a model with 40 Xe cores is in the works. This one seems a bit more grounded in reality, packing the aforementioned cores, a 192-bit memory bus, and none of the Adamantine cache. RedGamingTech speculated that this design might claim the flagship slot, citing the poor margins that could come from the 56 Xe core model.
It’s possible the final specs aren’t nailed down yet, but leaks point to one thing as a certainty — the flagship model will come with a boost to Xe cores. It appears Intel is working on two main models for Battlemage, similar to Alchemist, but we could see more variants after the first GPUs are here.Intel Battlemage: pricing and release date
We expect Battlemage cards to show up in the second half of 2024, but they may materialize even sooner.
