[Updated] Intel says it remains committed to its Arc graphics project — 'Intel will continue to have GPU product offerings'

Intel Arc Pro Battlemage
(Image credit: Intel)

09/19/2025 update: After publication, an Intel representative reached out with the following statement regarding GPU development: "While we’re not sharing specific roadmaps at this time, everything we discussed aligns with and complements Intel’s existing strategy. This collaboration with NVIDIA enables us to deliver additional custom solutions that accelerate AI workloads and broaden our reach across high-performance computing segments in client and data center.

We remain committed to our GPU roadmap. We’ll be collaborating with NVIDIA to serve specific market segments, but we’re also continuing to execute on our own path."

Intel and Nvidia both claim their partnership won't affect existing roadmaps, but some in the enthusiast community fear that a $5 billion cash influx from Nvidia could come with pressure for Intel not to compete with RTX cards — assuming Nvidia is still fully focused on the gaming market, given how it now represents a small fraction of the company's business.

Bruno Ferreira
Contributor

Bruno Ferreira is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has decades of experience with PC hardware and assorted sundries, alongside a career as a developer. He's obsessed with detail and has a tendency to ramble on the topics he loves. When not doing that, he's usually playing games, or at live music shows and festivals.

  • atomicWAR
    "Intel says it remains committed to its Arc graphics project ."

    I want so badly for this to be true but I have so little faith that it is with their joint move with Nvidia.
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  • vanadiel007
    Let's be honest: they are and never were in a position to challenge either Nvidia or AMD.
    I don't see many purchase an Arc graphics card...
    Reply
  • palladin9479
    The B580 is a really solid entry level GPU, I hope they continue developing their drivers and the next generation product ends up being even better in that segment.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    Maybe this will be better than Kaby Lake G? LOL
    Reply
  • Notton
    If the Intel+Nvidia partnership remains on track, the earliest we are likely to see a desktop/mobile/handheld chip from them is 2028 with Hammer Lake.

    Given Intel's track record, I'd expect 2029 at the earliest (high end SKU) and 2030 for a viable product (for us plebs). And Just because Nvidia joined, it doesn't mean we'll get to see something sooner. Maybe the GPU tile will be fine, but the CPU tile is a big question mark.

    So, my guess, Arc dGPU will stick around until at least 2027, but we'll still see an Arc iGPU until 2030-ish. Whether or not they stop at Celestial remains to be seen, though I'd guess they will. There really isn't any incentive to go to D-series or E-series.

    The main problem with Arc is the die size, as in they are colossal for the performance they offer.
    Still interested to see how well B770 will perform. They're printing box art for it, apparently.
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  • Penzi
    “Last December, Intel's ex-CEO Pat Gelsinger left abruptly.” Ousted is indeed abruptly…

    There is nothing in any way certain from Intel, but my hope is that the Arc series gets both a return of its mid-grade flagship (7 series) and a genuine leap in capabilities in the Celestial generation, which is when I expect to replace my 4070… I’d rather not support nVidia next time. Perhaps AMD will keep up the decent work that resulted in the 9070XT… but I’d still rather snag a C770 or whatever it’ll be called. With about a million caveats.
    Reply
  • jlake3
    atomicWAR said:
    "Intel says it remains committed to its Arc graphics project ."

    I want so badly for this to be true but I have so little faith that it is with their joint move with Nvidia.
    I see a lot of room for them to be very weasel-y with how that’s worded and how their products are branded. The Arc branding encompasses monolithic iGPUs, on-package tiles, desktop discrete, and datacenter GPGPU at this point, and Intel didn’t commit to any specific segments or products, only to the “Arc project”.

    It feels like Arc could slump back into the same budget/low-power role as Intel HD while Intel technically “remains committed” to maintaining and developing an Arc product line.

    Some of the news I’d seen about Celestial and Druid development contained some similar ambiguity, where people want to read statements about the architecture as statements about desktop discrete gaming, but Intel technically never makes that promise.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    It's nice to hear phrases like "committed to its existing strategy". However, when that strategy was already highly in doubt, such words really ring hollow.

    If Intel really wants to reassure customers and partners, then it should come out and say what its roadmap is, at least through Celestial (Xe 3) dGPUs and ideally Druid (Xe 4) iGPUs. This whole "will they?" / "won't they?" drama has undermined confidence in their efforts, and their messaging on this front has been a lot more limited and fuzzy than when Gelsinger was in charge.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    vanadiel007 said:
    Let's be honest: they are and never were in a position to challenge either Nvidia or AMD.
    No, they're not going to compete for the flagship crown, but their biggest threat was upsetting the price structure of Nvidia and AMD's offerings. Erosion at the low end of the product stack can work its way up, making even higher-end models slightly less profitable for the companies.

    Intel dGPUs have also been a great as non-gaming cards, supporting up to 4 outputs and AV1 encode/decode acceleration. They're getting scarce, but you can score an Intel Arc Pro A40, which does all this and is basically a single-slot, low-profile 50 Watt version of the A380, for under $200.

    Also, from the look of it, B770 could be a decent mid-range offering (depending entirely on how it's priced).
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Notton said:
    If the Intel+Nvidia partnership remains on track, the earliest we are likely to see a desktop/mobile/handheld chip from them is 2028 with Hammer Lake.
    I think it could hit laptops as early as late 2026 or early 2027, but that depends a lot on how long they've been working on the iGPU project. They said these efforts started about 1 year ago, but I'm not sure they necessarily meant the iGPU and not simply the part about making custom Xeons with integrated NVLink.

    Notton said:
    Maybe the GPU tile will be fine, but the CPU tile is a big question mark.
    IMO, the main problem with Lunar Lake is pricing. CPU-wise, I think it's decent.

    Notton said:
    my guess, Arc dGPU will stick around until at least 2027,
    Why would they? For a product which is completely validated and in production (e.g. B770), they might go ahead and sell it. At this point, they've already made most of the investment and so there's less of an argument not to just sell the thing and generate some revenue from it.

    For anything still requiring further investments in engineering and production, I think they're likely to get stopped in their tracks. Once a company has decided to get out of a market, they will stop dumping money into that hole almost immediately.
    Reply