In a few weeks' time, Intel could be presenting its second generation of ARC Battlemage graphics cards.
Ahead of the presentation of the first ARC Alchemist graphics cards, Intel had indicated that its return to this market after a twenty-year absence was not just an idea: the American company had every intention of making a success of this comeback and asserting its presence, year after year. Since then, however, water has flowed under the bridge. First of all, ARC Alchemist may not have been the success it was hoped for, despite its high-quality follow-up and constantly improved drivers. More importantly, Intel is now in a delicate situation, to say the least: sales are down, but it's above all profits and operating margins that give cause for concern. Against this backdrop, the question of the continuation of the GPU business logically arose.
Intel details the first three generations of ARC © Intel
A question which, it seems, has been answered: according to Golden Pig Upgrade, a well-known informant among hardware specialists, quoted by VideoCardz, Intel not only intends to continue in the graphics card market, but the next generation of its cards is much closer than you might think. At the time of presenting ARC Alchemist, Intel had mentioned ARC Battlemage, ARC Celestial and even ARC Druid to show its commitment. ARC Battlemage was supposed to be this second generation, and there was talk of a " 2023/2024 " release, a forecast that was quickly revised downwards to a mere " current-2024 ". We're now in November, and this " 2024-current " is coming to an end.
Golden Pig Upgrade evokes ARC Battlemage © VideoCardz
Well, that's precisely the point of Golden Pig Upgrade's message on the Weibo forums. In these words, the informant states that he is " looking forward to seeing Battlemage do very well next month ". His message confirms that, for the time being, we're only talking about the desktop version of ARC Battlemage, i.e. a GPU designed for a dedicated graphics card to be integrated into our PCs, and not a mobile laptop model or an APU. We won't know any more for the moment, but ARC Battlemage seems to be alive and well, Intel hasn't given up, and this presentation ahead of CES in Las Vegas (January 7-10, 2025) is a way of putting itself forward at a time when the Nevada show will be monopolized by announcements from AMD and NVIDIA.
