Intel Demonstrates Arc Alchemist Desktop Graphics Card

Arc
(Image credit: Raja Koduri/Intel/Twitter)

Intel demonstrated a desktop Arc Alchemist graphics card up and running at its Investor Meeting 2022 event on Thursday, a picture posted by Raja Koduri, Intel's graphics chief, shows. The demonstration further supports that Intel's DG2 family of desktop graphics cards is getting ready for launch in Q2 2022 and that the line-up will include boards that fit into enthusiast-grade Intel's NUC 11 Extreme 'Beast Canyon.' 

The showcase of an Arc Canyon graphics card at an investors event sends a mixed message. On the one hand, Intel installed the board into its NUC 11 Extreme 'Beast Canyon' machine designed for enthusiast gamers and engineered to support the latest GeForce RTX 30 and Radeon RX 6000 graphics cards that are both long (up to 12 inches) and tall. On the other hand, demonstrating an upcoming graphics board using Shadow of the Tomb Raider game from 2018 is a bit strange. Perhaps, Intel wanted to demonstrate capabilities of its XeSS (Xe supersampling) AI-enhanced upscaling technology and create some kind of wow effect among the financial community, but there are newer titles to do that and these titles will look even better with XeSS.

In any case, the fact that Intel has Arc Alchemist graphics cards to show off publicly is generally a good sign. Intel has still has not announced any details about its go-to-market strategy for Arc Alchemist and which graphics boards makers will supply the actual cards, but maybe Intel will have a separate event for that. 

The demonstration of a graphics card several months before its availability is a rare occurrence in current realities as two major GPU designers do not want to spoil sales of their existing offerings by showing soon-to-be-released products with higher performance and new features. But Intel does not have any enthusiast-grade graphics hardware on the market today, which is why it can showcase its next-generation cards in broad daylight. 

Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • thisisaname
    Demoing a game from 4 years ago does this show the card is 4 years behind or is it just me?
    Reply
  • mo_osk
    Shadow of the Tomb Raider is still a very nice game with up to date features that can be used to show how their card perform relatively to other manufacturer's. And its also very likely that someone not familiar with video game is still familiar with it. I think its a good PR choice.
    Reply
  • magbarn
    Hopefully Intel entering the market will make PC gaming affordable again....
    Reply
  • watzupken
    I feel it feels like history is going to repeat itself. The last time Raja released Polaris and Vega, he was “showcasing” the card running with no performance numbers to share. When they are released, they fell short of the expectation he build up. It is not just about the card running, its also about performance. Looks like he is back with his beat around the bush, blowing hot air tactics.
    Reply
  • LolaGT
    It isn't a terrible game to gauge a GPU
    Hell, everyone has it, and it has a built in bench.
    Now, if intel would publish actual numbers, then we'd know...
    Until then, it is just a PR stunt.
    Reply
  • jp7189
    watzupken said:
    I feel it feels like history is going to repeat itself. The last time Raja released Polaris and Vega, he was “showcasing” the card running with no performance numbers to share. When they are released, they fell short of the expectation he build up. It is not just about the card running, its also about performance. Looks like he is back with his beat around the bush, blowing hot air tactics.
    Agreed. Two things have me worried about Arc:
    Changing time tables and switch to low powered, laptop first strategy
    Koduri's shift in focus to bitcoin ASICs feels like a move for him to save his backside from an impending GPU debacle.
    Reply
  • samopa
    The elephant in the room is the price. Even if the ARC is only perform as good as the RTX3060, but if they price it right (for example USD 200), people will buy, heck, even miners will jump all over it, which will also drag the price of higher model, i.e. RTX3080, down with it.
    Reply