Next-gen Battlemage graphics cards are progressing well and should arrive before CES 2025, we’ve heard from Intel.
Specifically this came from Tom Petersen, Intel Fellow, who was interviewed by PC World at CES 2024 (see the YouTube clip below) as highlighted by PC Gamer.
Petersen said he’s excited about Battlemage which has moved onto development on the software side in the main – with 30% of Intel’s engineers working on it, we’re told – and the hardware team has already moved onto Celestial (3rd-gen graphics cards).
Petersen enthused: “So, think about it [as Battlemage] already has its first silicon in the labs which is very exciting and there’s more good news coming which I can’t talk about right now. We hope we are going to see it before CES 25.”
Analysis: Hoping for the best with Battlemage
The fact that there’s more good news coming is intriguing, of course, and it seems that Battlemage is on track for its previously rumored launch at some point in 2024. We were hoping for maybe a mid-2024 release timeframe, but realistically we were thinking that later in the year is probably more likely – and Peterson’s comment here makes it seem like it’ll be towards the very end of 2024.
Indeed, Petersen is talking in terms of ‘hoping’ rather than knowing, so we could be looking at an early 2025 launch (at CES 2025, perhaps). Although to be fair, it’s standard practice to keep things vague for the timing of any future hardware launch, of course.
Hopefully what we won’t see is a repeat of the Arc Alchemist launch which was plagued with delays, but given that there was a whole lot more to do to get things together for the original GPUs – particularly on the software side with drivers – it isn’t likely that’ll happen again.
Again, going by past rumors, Battlemage is set to be much like Alchemist in that it’ll top out at the mid-range – or maybe upper-mid-range (enthusiast class) – and won’t challenge the likes of high-end GPUs from Nvidia and AMD. (Although RDNA 4 may give the high-end a swerve, too, based on chatter from the grapevine, leaving Team Green with sole dominion in that expensive price bracket).
We’re hopeful that with lessons learned from Alchemist, and continual Arc driver improvements throughout 2024 – as witnessed consistently over the course of 2023 – Battlemage GPUs will be good candidates to grab spots on our roundup of the best graphics cards (and moreover, perhaps, the best cheap GPUs).
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