Progress with Intel’s Battlemage graphics cards may be looking a bit shaky, following a new update from a YouTube leaker.
This is Moore’s Law is Dead (MLID), a regular source of leaks from the GPU world (and CPUs, plus consoles too), who has released a new video that delves into a few topics. One of these is the second-generation Arc GPUs, and an Intel source told us that the last time there were updates to the Battlemage test boards was April 2023.
Yes, that was almost a year ago now, which is clearly a worrying indication that Intel is moving slowly towards making Battlemage a reality. However, it is equally clear that we should be cautious about a single rumor.
MLID’s source adds another piece of information from some internal Intel documents, namely that final validation for Battlemage is planned for Q4 2024 at the earliest.
In short, we’ll be ‘very lucky’ if we see the next generation of Arc GPUs hit the market this year, and it might not even be that early in 2025 that they arrive – the validation process could take a few months (one to three months, usually). If Battlemage graphics cards arrive at all, MLID notes at the end of the rumor dump, on a more pessimistic note.
Analysis: Expelling Doom
Of course, we shouldn’t get carried away with the doom and gloom – this is just a rumor, and a complete cancellation of Battlemage certainly won’t happen. Will it? Well, okay, it’s not outside the realm of possibility, but what we’ve heard elsewhere doesn’t point towards this kind of scenario. Yet.
That said, a few weeks ago MLID spread the rumor (again, add spice) that Battlemage for laptops has been canned. But dropping the entire Arc line is an entirely different matter, and the leaker is of course not telling us that this is something he’s heard – just that it could be a (hopefully very remote) possibility.
Intel is certainly holding its own when it comes to Battlemage lately. But then, of course, Team Blue would hide all the cracks that appear behind the scenes, when they present the second generation Arc to the public, of course.
But even with Intel’s latest update (last month at CES 2024), it sounded like Battlemage would likely be pushed back to early 2025, rather than arriving this year. And that does indeed seem like a real possibility, which is somewhat disappointing.
Especially since there are pretty high expectations for how Intel will perform with Battlemage – especially considering how Alchemist has consistently improved, with impressive gains through new drivers time and time again. Expectations have been appropriately raised, even if Intel’s next-gen lineup will ultimately only exist as lower-end GPUs, as rumors have claimed for some time.
Indeed, we could really use a more compelling competitor to the GPU duopoly on the budget side of the market, which has actually been neglected for too long (certainly by Nvidia).