Intel Arc “Alchemist” first graphics card from Intel – demas in several game titles

Formerly Xe-HPG, now Intel Arc. It is the brand that will be used by Intel for its graphics cards for games, similar to how AMD and Nvidia use Radeon and Geforce respectively. At the same time, the names of the first and next three generations of graphics cards are published, and not least a video where a copy in pre-production is demonstrated.

Intel Arc: Code name for four generations

With the code names, Intel borrows fresh from the fantasy world’s fantastic world. The first generation of Intel Arc, formerly Xe-HPG, is called Alchemist and judging by the images, it consists of at least two separate graphics circuits. The largest of these should be the one called DG2 while the smaller one may be the infamous circuit that is expected to find its way into primarily laptops.

The next generation is called Battlemage, which is followed by Celestial and the fourth is Druid. When these see the light of day is not known, but reasonably they should be launched at around one year intervals. As this is the first time Intel is talking about future generations of graphics cards, it is also not known what new features are to be expected compared to the first generation Alchemist.

The video that is published shows what is said to be gameplay from Mount & Blade II Bannerlord, Forza Horizon 4, Psychonauts 2, Player Unknown Battlegrounds, Subnautica Below Zero, Metro Exodus, Rift Breaker, Days Gone, Chivalry II and Crysis Remastered Trilogy. A final sequence also shows what is either an early unannounced game or performance test.

It was recently revealed that Intel has grabbed Anton Kaplanyan from Nvidia. This is one of the big names behind Nvidia’s upscaling technology Deep Learning Super-Sampling (DLSS) and features for ray tracing, such as noise reduction. In a post on Twitter, he confirms that Intel will have a technology equivalent to DLSS, which according to previous information will be named Xe Super-Sampling (XESS).

In addition to a challenge for DLSS, Intel has previously revealed that Xe-HPG will offer full support for DirectX 12 Ultimate, which includes mesh shaders and ray tracing. When Intel Arc “Alchemist” is launched in early 2022, it is expected to go up against the current series AMD Radeon RX 6000 and Nvidia Geforce RTX 3000.

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