At yesterday's The Game Awards 2021, Intel sent a reminder that AMD and Nvidia won't have the GPU marketplace all to themselves for too much longer. At the event, Intel displayed a trailer showcasing various hot game titles running on the Arc Alchemist (opens in new tab) board in dazzling 1440p. The rendered image of the desktop PC also holds some interesting tidbits, like an eight-pin power connector.
1440p video is the maximum available YouTube resolution, and it's subject to the usual caveats around YouTube's compression. However, the video appears to show Intel's new chip chomping through Rider's Republic, Age of Empires 4, Back 4 Blood, Rift Breaker, Hitman III and Arcadegeddon with no difficulty, taking time out to boast of AI upscaling, ray-tracing, and accelerated game streaming during the demo.
We also see a stylized render with an Intel Arc branded laptop and desktop in the video. The desktop card looks like it sports an 8-pin power connector. As this is just a render, we have to take a pinch of salt until more substantial information is released.
Sadly, you can't tell much from a 30-second trailer as there are no fps counters or other means to measure performance. Nevertheless, it's good to see Intel offering an alternative to AMD and Nvidia, and it won't be long before we can get our hands on Arcs of our own — as the trailer reminds us, Intel's launch is expected in the first quarter of 2022.
