Intel demos its DG2 GPUs, confirms ARC series roadmap and development of AI super sampling tech

Intel ARC to battle AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce

Today Intel officially confirmed the name of its new discrete graphics series. Starting early 2022, Intel ARC graphics cards are to compete with NVIDIA and AMD products. 

Intel ARC will debut early next year with the DG2 series of GPUs known as Alchemist. The manufacturer also confirmed that its successor will be called Battlemage, followed by Celestial and Druid. While there have been leaks that Intel is working on DG3 GPUs (presumably “Battlemage), there was until now no information on their successors.

Furthermore, Intel has revealed a picture of the first two DG2 GPUs. Those appear to be DG2-128EU and DG2-512EU GPUs. The latter is the flagship GPU for the upcoming desktop and mobile series. The picture also matches the photo that was revealed by Raja Koduri back in June.

Intel is also revealing the first gameplay demonstration featuring preproduction Arc graphics cards in action. The video does not show any framerate counters, which makes it impossible to compare it with any other product.

AI-based Super Sampling in the works at Intel

What shouldn’t be omitted is the fact that Intel has confirmed publicly it is developing an AI-based supersampling technology. Following the success of NVIDIA DLSS and the recent announcement and quick adoption of AMD FSR, Intel really did not have much choice but to develop its own solution. This is after the company had already expressed interest possible adoption of AMD FSR which has gone open-source.

Upcoming Intel Arc graphics products are based on the Xe-HPG microarchitecture, a convergence of Intel’s Xe LP, HP and HPC microarchitectures, that will deliver scalability and compute efficiency with advanced graphics features. Alchemist, the first generation of Intel Arc products, will feature hardware-based ray tracing and artificial intelligence-driven super sampling, and offer full support for DirectX 12 Ultimate.
— Intel