Intel Battlemage: All of the rumors so far

For years, the consumer GPU market has largely been dominated by Nvidia and AMD, and the situation hasn’t changed much in 2024. Released back in 2022, the Intel Alchemist graphics cards were plagued by major bugs and driver issues, causing even the most powerful GPU from Team Blue to barely stand against the mid-range offerings from its rivals.

But with Intel Battlemage, the successor to the Alchemist Xe series, on the horizon, things are looking up for Intel GPU lovers. If you haven’t caught up with the news surrounding the Battlemage family, then here’s a quick rundown of all the rumors and leaks we have on Intel’s Xe2 graphics cards.

Intel Battlemage: What we’re hoping to see, and how much we're willing to pay

While Nvidia and AMD launch their new GPUs in a ~2-year interval, there’s no saying whether Intel will follow the same timeline as its rivals. In an earlier video from February, YouTuber Moore's Law Is Dead noted that as per their sources at Intel, Team Blue won’t validate their graphics cards before Q4 2024. Assuming Intel takes a month or two to wrap up the validation checks, it’s easy to imagine that the Battlemage lineup won’t make its debut until the first (or perhaps, even the second) quarter of 2025.

That said, rumors on the release of the next-gen Battlemage GPUs are all over the place. In more recent news, ComputerBase revealed that Intel plans to launch them before CES, preferably before Black Friday. If Intel manages to stick to this deadline, we might see the Battlemage family well before the Radeon 8000 series, which is rumored to be released sometime later this year.

The pricing, however, is anybody’s guess. Going off the fact that the most expensive Arc A770 variant had a price tag of $349 when it hit the market, we expect the flagship Battlemage G21 GPU (more on that later) to be anywhere between $400-500 after factoring in the exorbitant GPU prices these days.

Intel Battlemage: What we know so far

At least two SKUs, though one of them has undergone many name and spec revisions

Despite some rumors claiming that Intel has given up on the Battlemage lineup, we’ve seen twice as many leaks confirming that Team Blue will go ahead with the Xe2 family. However, the names of the graphics cards in the Battlemage series remain an enigma.

Initially, Intel supposedly had concrete plans for two GPUs: BMG-G10 and BMG-G21. The former was believed to be the flagship next-gen model, while BMG-G21 was expected to be a cheaper SKU. However, earlier this year, RedGamingTech reported that Intel had scrapped BMG-G10, with the company going with the newly leaked BMG-G31 chip as the premium GPU this generation.

But a few weeks after the video went live, leaker momomo_us posted the shipping manifests for the G10 and G21 SKUs. Interestingly, while the G21 GPUs are in the Pre-Qualification stage, the G10 chips didn’t have such a tag associated with them, making their release more questionable than ever.

Finally, just a few days ago, miktdt revealed that Intel recently updated the source code of its oneAPI DPC++ compiler. Inside the SYCL.cpp file, Team Blue created a code snippt for BMG-G21. So, leaving the G10/G31 conundrum aside, we have enough reasons to presume that Intel will at least release the G21 this generation.

Greater (or at the very least, equal) Xe core count than Alchemist GPUs

If you thought the chip names were contradictory, then wait until you get a load of the Xe core count this generation. Previously, the flagship BMG-G10 was supposed to feature 64 Xe-cores, which is twice the number available on the Alchemist flagship A770 GPU. It was also rumored to have a wattage of 225W, the same as the A770.

At the beginning of the year, RedGamingTech noted the next-gen flagship will instead ship with a slightly lesser 56 Xe core count, before revealing in a later video that the number has been reduced to 32 Xe cores for the rumored G31 SKU (and we’ll get to that in a bit). Meanwhile, the specifications for the BMG-G21 have remained somewhat consistent. The mid-range graphics card is expected to feature 20 Xe cores and has a TDP rating of less than 150W.

More ALUs per EUs, fewer EUs per Xe

To make things even more complicated, Intel has switched up the number of processing units in its Battlemage GPUs. For reference, the Alchemist graphics cards feature 8 ALUs (Arithmetic Logic Units) for every EU (Execution Unit), while each Xe core includes 16 of these EUs. Meanwhile, the rumored Battlemage family has twice the number of ALUs per EU, though the number of EUs per Xe core has been reduced from 16 to 8, effectively making the total Xe count of the flagship G31 the same as the A770’s.

GDDR6X memory and PCIe Gen 5 compatibility

While Nvidia is rumored to ship its upcoming Blackwell family with GDDR7 memory, Intel will probably include the older GDDR6X memory in the Battlemage lineup. Either way, it’s still an upgrade from the Alchemist series, which has GDDR6 memory, though the VRAM size for the Xe2 flagship will remain unchanged from the current-gen A770. As for the PCIe standard, the Battlemage series should be compatible with the PCIe 5.0 interface, though the mid-range G21 is expected to utilize only x8 bus width.

Support for Linux and DisplayPort UHBR13.5

In April, Phoronix reported that Intel developers have silently added support for the Xe2 GPUs in the display drivers. Soon, VideoCardz posted more details on the drivers, noting that the maximum data transfer rate has been capped at 13.5GB instead of 20GB. Although we have yet to see monitors in the affordable range compatible with DisplayPort UHBR20 technology, it’s still a bit disappointing that Intel purposefully removed UHBR20 support from their drivers.

New TSMC manufacturing node

Every generation, GPU manufacturers aim to decrease the size of the process node, and it looks like Intel is sticking to TSMC for the manufacturing process. As per the older rumors, Team Blue was expected to utilize TSMC’s 4nm node in its latest graphics cards. However, RedGamingTech’s recent videos highlighted that Team Blue will go with TSMC’s N5P processing node instead. Either way, the manufacturing process is getting an upgrade, because the current-gen Arc GPUs are fabricated using TSMC's N6 process.

Can the Battlemage series enchant its way to the top?

Whether you’re excited about the next-gen Intel GPUs or are holding your breath, hoping the Battlemage family doesn’t get hexed with terrible drivers like its Alchemist brethren, you should take these rumors with a pinch of salt. After all, we’ve seen a wave of new (and mostly contradictory information) flood the Internet since the beginning of the year. And Intel hasn’t helped much by keeping all the cards (pun intended) close to its chest.

Regardless, just the fact that we have a third competitor in the GPU wars is worth celebrating. If the Battlemage series manages to provide solid performance, then Intel might just emerge as the dominating brand in the mid-range GPU market.