Intel Arc Battlemage Release Date, Price, Performance, Specs

What will Intel Arc Battlemage be capable of? Here's everything you should know about the Intel Arc Battlemage, such as the release date, price and specs.

Intel Arc Alchemist was Intel’s first step to become a vital part of the dedicated graphics card world. And even though the Alchemist GPUs, Arc A770 and A750, were not as powerful as NVIDIA’s RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 or AMD’s flagship RX 6950 XT, they still offered pretty good value.

Intel announced its Alchemist architecture, which consisted of reasonably priced mid-range GPUs to compete against AMD and NVIDIA‘s unreasonably priced graphics cards.

Alongside the Arc Alchemist announcement, Intel showcased future GPU generations, Battlemage, Celestial, and Druid.

So, with Arc Alchemist out, the upcoming generation is Arc Battlemage. This time around, Intel may also have flagship GPUs that can compete against AMD’s and NVIDIA’s high-end GPUs.

We can’t know exactly what Battlemage will be capable of, but we’ve gathered some information through rumors and leaks to keep you updated.

Let’s check out what Battlemage might offer!

Updates +

  • March 25, 2023: Added new leaks and information on the release date, specifications, pricing and more.

Table of ContentsShow

Release Date

With Intel still working hard on Intel Arc Alchemist, which might also lead to more SKUs throughout 2023, there isn’t any concrete information regarding the release date of Arc Battlemage.

However, Intel’s Arc roadmap does give us a general idea of what to expect.

Intel's Arc roadmap
Source: Intel

In Intel’s Investor Meeting in 2022, Intel projected that Battlemage GPUs will release between 2023 and 2024.

But, considering the very late release of Arc A750 and A770, the lack of additional SKUs, and driver optimization, we can assume that the earliest Battlemage GPU may release in 2024.

In Moore’s Law Is Dead (known leaker) video, the rumors/leaks suggest that Battlemage is pushed for late 2024 and that the flagship chip might be canceled.

Although low-end SKUs, just like the A380 might release a bit earlier into 2024.

We hope that Battlemage will not suffer the same fate as Arc Alchemist and go through several different delays.

If Intel manages to keep to its original release date plans, the ARC GPUs will be much more competitive against NVIDIA and AMD.

Here is what Raja Koduri, the executive vice president and general manager of Intel’s GPU division (AXG Group), had to say regarding the GPU design cycles during the Gadgets360 interview.

Doing a new architecture is always very difficult. New architectures take 3-4 years but after that once you have a baseline, iterating on it is quite fast. Since we are coming from nothing, we want to iterate fast so that we can catch up to the competition in every segment.

Raja Koduri

However, Raja Koduri, who’s been working for 5 years on Intel’s GPUs announced his embark from Intel in early 2023. MLID’s sources even mentioned that Koduri was actually fired rather than leaving by his own volition.

Raja Koduri’s departure from Intel’s GPU division will definitely bring consequences, but Intel’s next actions will determine whether they will be good or bad.

Specifications

Since it is still early for Intel to share any concrete information on Arc Battlemage, specifications information or even leaks are pretty scarce. In fact, Intel rarely has any leaks for its products.

However, a leaker on Twitter, Komachi_Esaka spotted some interesting information in a mistakenly published Intel GPU test driver on their website.

Intel GPU test driver

The driver lists several unknown integrated GPUs but also mentions two unreleased dedicated graphics cards that fall under the codename ELASTI_DG.

Various leakers have previously mentioned this ELASTI codename and connected it to the Battlemage architecture.

We’ve also seen rumors circulating that Intel will use TSMC’s 4nm process node for Battlemage. Although TSMC is currently focusing on a 3nm process node, which NVIDIA’s RTX 5000 and AMD’s RDNA 4 GPUs will most probably use. That may put Intel at a disadvantage.

MLID’s leak suggests that these next-gen GPUs with TSMC 4nm technology might deliver up to 70% performance improvement over the previous generation.

In that case, even if the A770’s performance is doubled, the Arc GPU will not even reach RX 7900 XTX performance. This won’t be enough to be competitive against NVIDIA or AMD’s next-gen GPUs.

But, it could be a good choice if it’s priced accordingly.

Those same leaks suggest that the flagship Battlemage GPU will have a 250mm2 die, which is a 38% smaller die than the A770, so Intel definitely will not be able to compete with the high-end market if they don’t come up with a bigger GPU.

It’s likely that Intel will use Battlemage as a small stepping stone to setup for a much bigger release of Arc Celestial or Arc Druid.

Power Draw

Intel ARC GPUs

In the same interview by Gadgets360, Raja Koduri also had something to say regarding the power limits/draw of future Intel GPUs.

Performance per Watt, or delivering higher performance at lower power, is my top priority. There will always be someone with some skill who can say “I’m going to give you more juice”, but my focus is lower power.

The other issue I find with just increasing power and bragging about benchmarks is that while it’s good from a marketing standpoint, [there is a limited] number of PC users who can just buy such a card and plug it in. It dramatically reduces your overall market, right?

Raja Koduri

Indeed, PC users would rather not spend extra money on a PSU to house a GPU that uses ridiculous amounts of power. Electricity doesn’t come for free, right?

But, is it possible for Raja’s performance-per-watt GPUs to compete against GPUs like the RTX 4090, which pushes up to 500W usage, or the RDNA 3 RX 7900 XTX, which has a total board power of 350W?

Koduri had something to say about that as well.

High-end has no limit right now. What is the definition of high-end? Is it 600 Watts? Obviously our partners and our customers want some halo SKUs for bragging rights, and we always like to figure out ways to enable that.

But my priority at this point is getting that core audience, with one power connector. And that can get you up to 200-225W. If you nail that, and something a little above and a little below, all that falls into the sweet spot.

Raja Koduri

If Intel can truly keep Arc Battlemage’s power draw to a “normal” level, AMD and NVIDIA might need to reconsider their current strategy of pushing the power limits for more FPS.

Price

Intel Arc GPU

Like with the specifications, it’s a bit early to find pricing information on Arc Battlemage.

However, we know that Raja Koduri’s plan with Intel’s GPUs is to offer better price-per-performance cards than the competition to break the duopoly.

Currently, both AMD and NVIDIA are pushing close to or above the $1000 mark, so naturally, Intel can utilize that.

Based on that, here are our price guesses:

  • Low-end GPUs – $90 to $150
  • Mid-end GPUs – $200 to $400
  • Halo product – $500 to $700

But, considering the rumors that there won’t be any next-gen flagship GPU from Intel then it’s likely that the most expensive Battlemage SKU will be priced less than $400.

Other than that, we can’t say much more about Intel Arc Battlemage GPUs. But, any future information Intel or leakers might share regarding this topic, we’ll make sure to add them to the article!

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Branko Gapo

Keeping up with the incredibly fast evolution of computer technology is impossible. That is why Branko will be using his knowledge on this matter to share news and information on all the latest essential technological innovations and advancements.