To say the last couple of years have been tough for us PC enthusiasts looking to snag
a fresh new graphics card is a gross understatement. New cards launched and
availability was already tight as it usually is with a new release. Then came the mining boom
and other natural disasters that only served to constrain the supply chain
even more. But on the horizon, a third player is coming to the gaming graphics card scene.
Intel is poised to set free their multi-year project to bring dedicated gaming graphics cards
of their own design to the world and it might just be what the doctor ordered right now.
PC enthusiasts typically think of Radeon or GeForce when gaming is mentioned—and
usually chuckle a little when someone mentions gaming on Intel graphics. That response isn’t
unwarranted in all fairness as the other two big boys have been working nearly exclusively
as dedicated gaming graphics cards giants for as long as gaming graphics cards have been a thing.
Intel, however, hasn’t quite had the same pedigree. Sure Intel had onboard graphics going
way back to the old Graphics Media Accelerator days but remembering a good friend trying to play
DOOM 3 on one still makes me laugh. And don’t get me started about the failed Intel i740.
But those were decades-ago situations and things have changed. Intel got a bit more serious on the
graphics side of things back with the introduction of Sandy Bridge and their HD graphics, iterating
like clockwork. Then a few years ago the company announced its own dedicated graphics division
and moved forward with launching Xe LPG, a media-focused graphics card with some
really weird caveats. It could only run on a handful of motherboards, none of which
included AMD-powered systems, and was almost impossible to get for the DIY market.
But that wasn’t the Xe GPU intended for gamers. That card would be code-named Xe-HPG
and is now known as Intel Arc, with a debut lineup called Intel Arc Alchemist
scheduled to launch in early 2022. How will Intel convince gamers to go with their gaming graphics
cards over the likes of well-established brands like GeForce and Radeon?
Intel is making Arc Alchemist just as attractive as the currently available graphics cards
with creature comforts that even I didn’t expect at first. We’re talking DirectX 12 Ultimate
compliance with Mesh Shader support, Variable Rate Shading, and even hardware-based ray tracing.
All of these are excellent features to include in Intel’s first outing in the
modern GPU space as it won’t have to fight the ‘but they don’t have support’ argument. I mean,
outside of DLSS of course as that will remain Nvidia’s trump card for the time being.
But did you know that Intel will have an answer for DLSS? And it could be an even better answer
than AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution. I’m talking about none other than Intel’s XeSS
or Xe Super Sampling. XeSS is Intel’s approach to solving the upscaling problem
with a technique that pairs machine learning with temporal feedback. It allows the game to run at a
sub-native resolution and then reconstruct it to the target resolution in much the
same way as DLSS does but without the need for dedicated Tensor cores to do the reconstruction.
Yes, XeSS will work better on Intel’s tensor-like XMX cores, but it can also run on DP4A or INT8
instructions that are found in the GPU shader cores on most modern graphics cards.
Okay, so what’s the big deal, you may be thinking? It sounds like a closed-off ecosystem like
Nvidia’s DLSS. That’s where you’re wrong kiddo. The truth is Intel knows it’s behind the 8-ball
when it comes to market share. Sure, it owns the integrated scene, but that doesn’t mean much when
it comes to dedicated GPUs. Convincing developers to work with a proprietary system for an audience
that is currently at ZERO percent market share is a recipe for disaster. So, Intel isn’t doing that.
XeSS is able to work with GeForce and Radeon cards alike so long as they support
those DP4A or INT8 operations. All of that sounds absolutely great,
but we know gamers right now have three major concerns when it comes to Intel Arc;
1) What kind of performance are we talking about, 2) What is that performance going to cost us,
and 3) How is it even going to be made in the current market conditions?
Let’s break those three down real quick starting with the performance targets. Right now, no one
outside of Intel knows with 100 percent certainty but according to Gordon’s article at PCWorld,
the performance has been hinted at with it being about “20X” that of the original Intel Crystal
Well graphics. By Gordon’s own estimations that could land it in the ballpark of an RTX 3070.
Second, pricing? I’m not even going to pretend to have an idea here on this one because there
are so many moving parts in the world today that even predicting a price could spell disaster for
expectations. Intel could go one of three ways here. One way is aiming to be a loss leader
and completely disrupt the market by releasing Arc GPUs at or near their cost,
especially if the company doesn’t have too many board partners helping make cards at first.
A second option could be simply pricing Arc competitively with comparable graphics
cards already on the market and just letting the chips fall where they may.
And third, which is the one I hope the company avoids, is releasing Arc at a premium and trying
to upsell it on the Intel pedigree and name alone. Please don’t do that Intel.
Finally, we have the ‘who is actually making it’ question. Intel may have its own fabs but the
company won’t be giving up space in those for the Intel Arc lineup. Instead, these graphics cards
will be made at TSMC. That’s right, you heard correctly, TSMC—the huge fabrication company
that supplies chips to AMD, Nvidia, Apple, and other Intel rivals. But with AMD gobbling up all
the 7nm wafer supply they can get their hands on and other vendors chomping at the 5nm flavor
Intel is shooting for TSMC’s 6nm supply. So we know the manufacturing efficiency will
be there. Let’s just hope Intel is able to get enough supply to satiate the demand.
So with all that we’ve gone through a bit of history with Intel and its graphics efforts
over the years both wins and failures that have brought us to the precipice of its launch into
the dedicated gaming graphics card space. We have discussed how Intel is leveraging
its expertise in design and development to push its own technologies as well as being compliant
with DirectX 12 Ultimate. And we’ve even talked a bit about my expectations for what Intel could
deliver and how. But that’s about it for where things stand for now. I suspect with Intel Arc
Alchemist launching in the first half of next year we should start seeing even more from Intel in the
coming months. While its graphics division is its own entity, I imagine Intel proper is
gearing up for their Alder Lake launch, then will be switching gears and going full steam ahead.
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