Intel Arc Battlemage: Benchmark database shows new graphics cards

It has now been around two years since Intel started competing with NVIDIA and AMD with its ARC graphics cards. However, the manufacturer was never really able to gain a foothold, although gaming performance was always significantly improved with driver updates. Entries on the Xe2 successors have now appeared for the first time in a benchmark database, which indicate the performance of the Intel Arc Battlemage graphics cards.

Intel Arc Battlemage: Data entry emerged

The first Intel Arc Battlemage graphics cards are set to come onto the market by the end of 2024, as officially confirmed by Intel in a roadmap last December. However, details on the new generation of graphics cards based on the Xe2 architecture were still pending.

Now, for the first time, two graphics cards with the new architecture have appeared in SiSoftware ‘s benchmark database, which point to the new Battlemage generation. These reveal some details about the specifications of two desktop graphics cards that were used on an ASUS Prime Z790-P WIFI motherboard.

They are based on 20 and 24 Xe cores respectively, which suggests that these are not likely to be the top models. Rather, they are likely to be the successors to the Intel Arc A580, which is also indicated by the clock speeds of 1.8 GHz to 2.0 GHz. The specified performance is also likely to be a placeholder.

3.072 shaders and 12 GB of memory

Specifically, SiSoftware lists two variants of the Intel Arc Battlemage graphics card, which differ in terms of cores, shaders and Vector processors.

Model 1 comes with 20 Xe processors, 2,560 streaming processors and 160 Vector processors. Model 2 is slightly more powerful with 24 Xe cores, 3,072 shaders and 192 Vector engines. Both variants rely on 12 GB of GDDR6 graphics memory and a 192-bit interface.

These values are therefore not really impressive. They are much more indicative of an upper mid-range level. Of course, these early listings should be taken with a grain of salt. According to unconfirmed rumors, Intel is also working on a version with 64 Xe cores, which could actually be a high-end graphics card.

Tom Petersen from Intel has already confirmed to PCWorld(via YouTube) that Intel Arc Battlemage is already up and running and will be launched at the end of the year. Internally, they are already working on new graphics chips for the next generation. Xe3 is to be called “Celestial” and will power the Panther Lake CPU model series as an iGPU. In other words, the 17th Intel Core generation, which is expected in 2026.