Ryan Shrout Departs Intel Ahead of Arc Battlemage Ramp

News
By Andrew E. Freedman
published

Another public face for Intel Arc is leaving the company.

Ryan Shrout's Intel badge
(Image credit: Ryan Shrout / @RyanShrout)

Ryan Shrout, one of the public faces for Intel when it came to graphics marketing aimed at the enthusiast PC community, is leaving the company. Shrout revealed the news on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter.  He hasn't yet announced what his next move will be.

"Fall is a season for change! Yesterday was my last day at Intel," Shrout wrote. "I’m going to take a couple weeks with the family then I’m excited to talk about what’s next!"

Prior to working in Intel's client graphics division, Shrout served as chief performance strategist, a job he took up in 2018. In that role, he pitched "real-world" usage scenarios, rather than benchmarks, as Intel's strengths against a resurgent AMD. His title before leaving the company was senior director of client segment strategy, CCG in Intel's graphics division. Before joining Intel, Shrout ran the website PC Perspective as well as running his own analyst firm, Shrout Research, so he was well known in the enthusiast PC-building space prior to joining Intel.

Shrout has more recently been one of the primary faces for the company, particularly around Intel's Arc graphics cards. He often appeared in videos with Intel graphics fellow Tom Petersen. These were informative videos showcasing Ryan and Tom "TAP" Petersen. The duo answered many of consumers' questions following the launch of the company's first-generation Arc Alchemist graphics cards. Ryan was also an integral part of the process surrounding the Arc launch, often being the face of the company along with Petersen.

Late last year, following the launch of the Arc GPUs, Intel reorganized its graphics division and Raja Koduri moved back into the Chief Architect role. Not surprisingly, he wasn't long in that role before announcing he was leaving Intel to found a new AI gaming startup. There's been quite a bit of uncertainty regarding Intel's GPU aspirations since then, especially given the broader layoffs in the GPU business unit that have occurred since then, but Battlemage supposedly remains on track and is expected to launch some time in 2024.

Shrout's news comes on the heels of a high-level departure at AMD: Scott Herkelman, senior vice president and general manager of its graphics business. The timing doesn't mean that the two are related, though Intel, AMD, and Nvidia have a bit of a revolving door of talent.

It's unclear what, if anything, Shrout's departure means for Intel's graphics business, though it may need someone new to interface more directly with the enthusiast PC community. Hopefully Battlemage will make a better showing than Alchemist and compete better against the best graphics cards.

Andrew E. Freedman

Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and Mastodon @FreedmanAE.mastodon.social.

20 Comments Comment from the forums
  • usertests
    This is a Ryan Shrout appreciation thread. ;)
    Reply
  • einheriar
    To bad that the guy that invented Benchmarketing as an alleged independet journalist.- He was doing such a great job that he got offered a job by intel to keep up the great job he did for intel as an independent journalist.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    einheriar said:
    Too bad that the guy that invented Benchmarketing as an alleged independet journalist.- He was doing such a great job that he got offered a job by intel to keep up the great job he did for intel as an independent journalist.
    If you want to talk about the guy that "invented" benchmarking and PC enthusiast websites, you'd be talking about Anand Lal Shimpi or Thomas Pabst. I remember reading both of them in the late 90s. TH got me into overclocking with an Abit IT5H and the Pentium 200 MHz MMX — running at 250 MHz on an 83.3 MHz FSB!

    PC Perspective launched in 2004, which is when I first started writing at AnandTech. It was about eight years after the original Sys.pair.com of THG and seven years after AnandTech. But I suppose the "benchmarketing" bit might be bigger for PCPer. I'm sure Payola was around long before Shrout, however. It's just everywhere now, especially on YouTube and with influencers. (Daily Tech's Payola article in 2007 was awesome; RIP, DT!)
    Reply
  • atomicWAR
    Between rumors and these departures from the ARC group I am more and more nervous Intel is going to can their discrete gaming GPUs. We need the competition in the GPU space. I will be sad to see them go if that ends up being the case. Fingers crossed I am wrong....
    Reply
  • suryasans
    For AMD and Intel, the most realistic opportunity for their discrete graphics business is to combine their integrated GPU and discrete GPU for cost conscious gamers like what AMD did with its dual graphics. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Hybrid_Graphics
    Reply
  • hannibal
    atomicWAR said:
    Between rumors and these departures from the ARC group I am more and more nervous Intel is going to can their discrete gaming GPUs. We need the competition in the GPU space. I will be sad to see them go if that ends up being the case. Fingers crossed I am wrong....

    So rats are leaving the sinking ship? Maybe, maybe.
    All in all Intel can not/will not bleed money by making GPUs for to long. If they soon start making 70-80% profit instead of losing money like they do now… It is the end!
    But in general. If battle mage is good, it is gonna ben 70%-80% more expensive than alcemic. If it is bad… Well it is the end of Intel discrete GPU manufacturing… They make GPUs for money and profit and now they are not getting it.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    atomicWAR said:
    Between rumors and these departures from the ARC group I am more and more nervous Intel is going to can their discrete gaming GPUs. We need the competition in the GPU space. I will be sad to see them go if that ends up being the case. Fingers crossed I am wrong....
    Personally, Ryan's position with Intel Graphics always felt a bit superfluous. Like Intel has TAP (Tom Petersen) and he's great at being a front man for Arc already. Ryan basically felt like TAP's counterpart and video partner. After Intel laid off a bunch of people last month, including a freaking Fellow, I can't help but wonder how Ryan remained as long as he did. Or... maybe he was on that list of layoffs and we just didn't know about it?

    --------------
    "The affected roles in those areas consisted of 11 GPU software development engineers and two graphics hardware engineers, an engineering manager and four engineers working on AI software as well as 28 engineers and architects working on cloud software and solutions.

    "The layoffs also claimed a general manager as well as an Intel fellow, the latter of which is the most prestigious title that can be given to a technical employee. CRN was unable to identify them.

    "Other roles caught up in Intel’s latest layoff round included a channel marketing manager, three engineering managers, six hardware engineers, five principal engineers, eight product marketing engineers, five product marketing engineering managers, 16 system-on-chip design engineers and two system-on-chip design engineering managers."
    --------------

    Now the real question is whether Battlemage is still happening. I mean, Arc has gotten better over time, yes, and Arc 2.0 could be truly competitive. But Arc A-series is definitely not where it needs to be right now, and Arc B-series could be billions in spending for potentially less than billions in sales. IMO, Battlemage needs to basically match Ada on performance up to at least the 4070 level, or it would probably be better to kill it off.
    Reply
  • Kamen Rider Blade
    JarredWaltonGPU said:
    Now the real question is whether Battlemage is still happening. I mean, Arc has gotten better over time, yes, and Arc 2.0 could be truly competitive. But Arc A-series is definitely not where it needs to be right now, and Arc B-series could be billions in spending for potentially less than billions in sales. IMO, Battlemage needs to basically match Ada on performance up to at least the 4070 level, or it would probably be better to kill it off.
    The entire "Arc" project is still on thin ice, so it's a "Wait & See" moment.
    Reply
  • Kamen Rider Blade
    This week's PC Perspective Podcast is going to be very interesting.
    Reply
  • Evildead_666
    JarredWaltonGPU said:
    If you want to talk about the guy that "invented" benchmarking and PC enthusiast websites, you'd be talking about Anand Lal Shimpi or Thomas Pabst. I remember reading both of them in the late 90s. TH got me into overclocking with an Abit IT5H and the Pentium 200 MHz MMX — running at 250 MHz on an 83.3 MHz FSB!

    PC Perspective launched in 2004, which is when I first started writing at AnandTech. It was about eight years after the original Sys.pair.com of THG and seven years after AnandTech. But I suppose the "benchmarketing" bit might be bigger for PCPer. I'm sure Payola was around long before Shrout, however. It's just everywhere now, especially on YouTube and with influencers. (Daily Tech's Payola article in 2007 was awesome; RIP, DT!)
    Those were the days.
    Pentium 60 running at 90MHz, P3 450 at 600.
    Thomas and Anand weren't the legends they are now yet.
    There were other sites, but many if not all have faded into oblivion.
    I still have a printout somewhere of the graphics card comparison, in the voodoo 4/5/6 era.
    Used to drool over those spec sheets.
    Reply