Summary

  • Intel has confirmed that its Arc Xe2 Battlemage graphics cards will be released in late 2024.
  • The first batch of Battlemage silicon is already being tested in labs, with the software being worked on by 30% of the Arc GPU team.
  • Intel plans to reveal more about the Battlemage lineup later this year and hopes to launch the graphics cards before CES 2025.

Intel's first-gen Arc Alchemist discrete graphics cards couldn't really make it to the list of the best GPUs for gamers, but the company is now ready to make amends with its next-gen offerings. The company has long been rumored to launch its Arc Xe2 Battlemage graphics cards in 2024, but remained tight-lipped about its next-gen GPU plans until now. That, however, changed this week, with Intel's Tom Petersen confirming that the Battlemage lineup will indeed ship in late 2024.

The revelation came during an interview with PCWorld, where Petersen confirmed that the next-gen Arc GPUs will likely debut "before CES 2025." According to him, the company is already testing the first batch of Battlemage silicon in its labs, where around 30 percent of the Arc GPU team is working on its software. The rest of the engineers, including almost the entire hardware team, have moved on to Celestial, which is expected to be the successor to Battlemage.

Describing the Battlemage development process as "exciting," Petersen said that the company will reveal some "good news" about its next-gen graphics cards later this year, but refused to divulge any more details about them as of now. According to him, "Battlemage already has its first silicon in the labs which is very exciting and there’s more good news coming which I can’t talk about right now ... I hope we are going see it before CES 2025."

This is the first time that Intel has officially announced its Battlemage plans, but last month, the company unwittingly revealed that its next-gen graphics cards could launch in 2024. The faux pas came during the Meteor Lake launch event in Japan, where the company showed off a presentation slide that revealed the company's 2024 product roadmap includes Battlemage graphics cards.

The Alchemist launch in 2022 was marred by buggy drivers, with gamers complaining that the cards performed poorly with DirectX 11 and DirectX 9 games. While most of the problems were eventually fixed, the initial mistakes sealed their fate, and the Alchemist cards never managed to gain traction among gamers around the world. One would hope that the next-gen cards will be free from software glitches and will be able to better compete against the best graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD.