Intel has only released two Arc Xe2 "Battlemage" desktop models: the B580 12 GB and B570 10 GB graphics cards. So far, these lower priced options have been warmly welcomed by reviewers and buyers alike—but gaming GPU enthusiasts are still actively clamoring for more potent second-gen "Battlemage" variants. The collective status of theorized "B750, B770, and (fancifully) B780" SKUs is frustratingly unclear. Intel has not generated any official new product noise since the launch of their B570 design, earlier this year—recent big announcements have focused on next-gen "AI PC" processor lines. A series of vague leaks have indicated cancelations and then revivals of speculated mid-to-high-end Arc Xe2 discrete cards.

As of late, a larger "BMG-G31" GPU identifier has appeared in shipping manifests—a previous leak pointed to "prototype" units being moved between company facilities. Yesterday, Haze2K1 shared another extract from NBD inventory documents—crucially, they believe that these items are heading to a crucial manufacturing plant in Vietnam. This location is/was tasked with the assembling of first-party B570 and B580 Limited Edition products. Fresh conjecture suggests that "B7XX" Limited Edition cards are in the pipeline, but current circumstances are still hazy. VideoCardz reckons that a "Developer Edition" 24 GB model is still in active development, but this rumored workstation/productivity-oriented card could be based on Intel's readily available "BMG-G21" GPU die.

At the tail end of March, an interaction between Tomasz Gawroński (aka GawroskiT) and Jaykihn (jaykihn0) indicated that Intel had abandoned the development of higher-end Arc Xe2 "Battlemage" graphics cards—possibly back in late 2024. Months of silence—since the launch of pleasingly wallet-friendly B580 and B570 models—instilled a sense of unease within segments of the PC gaming hardware community. Many watchdogs assumed that company engineers had simply moved onto devising futuristic Arc Xe3 "Celestial" equivalents. As discovered last week, hopes have been elevated for a potential expansion of Team Blue's "Battlemage" dGPU lineup. Haze2K1 highlighted an intriguing entry within an NBD shipping manifest; a "BMG-G31"-type GPU was transferred "for R&D purposes." Currently, the lower end of Intel's B-card series is populated by discrete solutions based on their smaller "BMG-G21" GPU design.

Tomasz Gawroński spent part of his Easter weekend poring over shipping documents; soon stumbling on an entry that mentioned a mysterious "IBC C32 SKT"—again, listed under "research and development" purposes. In a reply to Gawroński's social media bulletin, miktdt weighed in with a logical theory: "because of the BMG in the text the best I could believe is a reworked/restarted BMG G31. C32 could simply mean cores 32 which is a fully-enabled G31. This makes more sense to me." VideoCardz posits that these leaks do not necessarily signal the revival of fortunes for more potent Arc Xe2 "Battlemage" SKUs; Intel could be shipping "canceled project" prototypes to different locations. Going back to late summer 2023, a "BMG G10" GPU die was spotted by members of the press during a tour of Team Blue's Malaysian test lab. Back then, certain industry insiders believed that the whole "Battlemage" endeavor was going through "development hell." Fast-forward to the present day; OneRaichu reckons that there is still a likelihood of Team Blue's "B770" model turning up at some point in the future.

Intel GPU enthusiasts have been waiting patiently for news regarding higher-end models; ever since the launches of wallet-friendly Arc Xe2 "Battlemage" B580 and B570 graphics cards. As the cliché goes; recent silence has been deafening—we last heard about a speculative expanded lineup of B-series SKUs around late January. At the time, three mysterious "Battlemage" PCI identifiers turned up online; courtesy of Tomasz Gawroński's detective work. Opinions were split about the exact nature of these leaked "BMG" IDs; one camp envisioned Team Blue having professional variants of their existing B580 in the pipeline—presumably with generously specced pools of 24 GB VRAM onboard. A more optimistic group posited that Intel's Arc Xe2 desktop gaming family would welcome more potent "B750, B770," and (maybe) "B780" SKUs.

Yesterday, Tomasz Gawroński (aka GawroskiT) interacted with another notable source of inside track information: Jaykihn (jaykihn0). Plenty of Team Blue-related "scoops" have emerged via Jaykihn's social media channel; mostly predictions regarding upcoming desktop, mobile and enterprise CPUs. Their latest leak indicates Intel's alleged abandoning of a high-end/larger "BMG-G31" GPU die in 2024; within the third quarter of that year. Insiders have long insisted that the Arc Xe2 "Battlemage" project navigated choppy waters during development; hence the appearance of endless theories about the whole caboodle being called off. Jaykihn clarified that he believes that a "retail" launch of "BMG-G31" dGPUs will no longer take place. Many watchdogs will assume that a gap will be filled by forthcoming Arc Xe3 "Celestial" discrete GPUs. Jaykihn stated that they have no fresh insights into how that project is going.

New rumors emerged via Notebookcheck that point to Intel's intention to continue developing discrete desktop GPUs after the imminent launch of its Arc Battlemage series. Leaker JayKihn confirmed in a comment on X that Intel is actively working on future GPU generations, namely the Arc Celestial and Arc Druid, unlike previous rumors that pointed to a possible cancellation if Battlemage underperforms. Sources say Intel is still committed to its GPU roadmap. With the Arc Battlemage series led by the B580 model, Intel is targeting the budget segment, going in direct competition with NVIDIA's RTX 4060 and RTX 4060 Ti. Price-wise, we can expect graphic cards with Intel Arc Battlemage to go around $250 (for the 12 GB model) and although the performance will not be groundbreaking, it can attract interest from buyers on a tight budget.

Since Intel has reportedly canceled all plans to launch discrete laptop Battlemage cards, Arc Druid and Arc Celestial could follow the same path. Although details regarding Arc Celestial and Arc Druid are scattered, confirmation of their development is good news for the PC graphics card market. What we do know now is that Arc Celestial models will arrive in 2025 or early 2026, which could coincide with the launch of Intel's Panther Lake CPUs. The GPUs are expected to take advantage of the new Xe3 graphics architecture (Arc B580 will feature Intel's Xe2-HPG architecture). However, given Intel's latest challenges, the ultimate success of these next-generation GPUs remains to be seen, while we still believe that the success of Arc Battlemage will be decisive for future Intel GPU development.

Intel's upcoming Arc B580, part of the next-generation Battlemage GPU series, has been leaked, giving tech enthusiasts an early glimpse of what's to come. Amazon unintentionally revealed the ASRock Arc B580 Steel Legend graphics card, confirming key specifications and indicating that we are about to get the new discrete GPU contenders. The Arc B580 will feature Intel's Xe2-HPG architecture, with a factory overclocked speed of 2.8 GHz. The board is equipped with 12 GB of GDDR6 memory running at a clock speed of 19 Gbps. While the core count remains unconfirmed, the product listing highlights its support for 8K resolution (7680 x 4320), and dual 8-pin power connectors. Two variants are expected: the Steel Legend revealed in Amazon's listing, and the Challenger, which has yet to appear in detail.

The leak also aligns with Intel's upcoming plan for the Battlemage series, as references to the Arc B-Series have been uncovered in Intel's official documentation, including the "Intel oneAPI Math Kernel" and "Intel Platform Monitoring Technology" files. The Arc B580 will lead the charge, potentially alongside a slightly less powerful Arc B570 model. Targeting the mid-range market, Intel seems poised to offer a competitive alternative to rival GPUs. AMD will also stick to mid-range segment with RDNA 4, so the battle of "midranges" is the one to watch this upcoming season. With support pages for the B-Series already live and public leaks increasing, an official announcement appears imminent—possibly within days. We previously learned that December is the month of Battlemage launch to steal the CES's attention for January.

Intel's discrete GPUs are close, and recent reports indicate Intel will reveal its next-generation Arc Battlemage graphics cards in December, moving from an earlier expected Black Friday announcement. Hardware insider Golden Pig Upgrade first mentioned this timeline shift, with data researcher Tomasz Gawroński providing supporting evidence through shipping manifest analysis. The December timing appears to position Intel's announcement before CES 2025, where AMD plans to showcase its Radeon RX 8000 series with RDNA 4 architecture, and NVIDIA will present its GeForce RTX 50 line. This will give Intel ample room to "steal" the attention of the tech press, who will be busy with NVIDIA and AMD during CES.

X account Bionic_Squash has confirmed Battlemage won't be Intel's final discrete graphics card, addressing questions about the company's long-term graphics development plans. Intel's future roadmap includes the Xe3 "Celestial" architecture, though current information only confirms its initial implementation in mobile chips at a reduced scale. The timeline for a full discrete graphics card using Celestial architecture remains unspecified. We are also left to wonder about Intel's approach to discrete GPU marketing push, as the company has yet to gain any significant footing among enthusiasts. In the coming years, Intel's expansion could prove worthwhile as it updates its GPUs with more performance from newer generations.

According to the latest report from ComputerBase, Intel had a strong presence at the recently concluded Embedded World 2024 conference. The company officially showcased its Arc series of GPUs for the embedded market, based on the existing Alchemist chips rebranded as the "E series." However, industry whispers hint at a more significant development—the impending launch of Intel's second-generation Arc Xe² GPUs, codenamed "Battlemage," potentially before the lucrative Black Friday shopping season. While Alchemist serves as Intel's current offering for embedded applications, many companies in attendance expressed keen interest in Battlemage, the successor to Alchemist. These firms often cover a broad spectrum, from servers and desktops to notebooks and embedded systems, necessitating a hardware platform that caters to this diverse range of applications.

Officially, Intel had previously stated that Battlemage would "hopefully" arrive before CES 2025, implying a 2024 launch. However, rumors from the trade show floor suggest a more ambitious target—a release before Black Friday, which falls on November 29th this year. This timeline aligns with Intel's historical launch patterns, as the original Arc A380 and notebook GPUs debuted in early October 2022, albeit with a staggered and limited rollout. Intel's struggles with the Alchemist launch serve as a learning experience for the company. Early promises and performance claims for the first-generation Arc GPUs failed to materialize, leading to a stuttering market introduction. This time, Intel has adopted a more reserved approach, avoiding premature and grandiose proclamations about Battlemage's capabilities.

Speculated lower-end Intel second generation Arc GPUs popped up via SiSoftware Sandra database entries around mid-March—evaluation samples are likely in the hands of trusted hardware partners. Yesterday, momomo_us happened upon another interesting shipping manifest, following a series of AMD-related leaks. The latest list reveals five "Battlemage" products—three utilizing the BMG-21 GPU, and the remaining two being based on the BMG-10 design. These identifiers have appeared in older leaks, although the latter has been viewed in place sight—chez Intel Malaysia's Failure Analysis Lab.

Previous leaks suggest that these second generation Arc models (Xe2) reside within a "High-Performance Graphics" (HPG) discrete GPU family—the Xe2-HPG BMG-10 range is likely targeting an "enthusiast" market segment, while the Xe2-HPG BMG-21 tier is rumored to offer mid-tier performance. Intel staffers have expressed confidence about a possible late 2024 launch window. Back in January, Tom "TAP" Petersen revealed that the Arc hardware team had already moved onto third-gen "Celestial" GPU endeavors: "I'd say about 30% of our engineers are working on Battlemage, mostly on the software side because our hardware team is on the next thing." The first-gen deck has not been cleared fully it seems—the Alchemist family could be joined by two new variants in the near future.

Intel, in a company presentation made to its channel partners, confirmed that it is looking to release its next generation Arc Xe² discrete GPU lineup, codenamed "Battlemage." This would be Intel's second rodeo with high performance gaming graphics since its 2022 return to the segment with the Arc "Alchemist" series. The One Intel presentation slide talks about what to look forward to from the company in the client segment, in the coming year. The slide states that PC processor, workstation processor, and discrete GPU segments will each see upcoming products, which can be seen as a confirmation for a 2024 launch of "Battlemage." Older company slides had illustrated that the launch of "Battlemage" would be timed around that of the company's "Meteor Lake" and "Arrow Lake" client processors. The company is expected to launch "Arrow Lake" sometime in 2024. With "Battlemage," Intel is looking to offer a linear increase in performance, along with new hardware capabilities. The discrete GPUs from this family are expected to be built on a 4 nm-class foundry node by TSMC.

Intel in an interview with Hardwareluxx shed more light on its second generation Xe graphics architecture, codenamed "Battlemage." There will be two key variants of "Battlemage,"—Xe2-LPG and Xe2-HPG. The Xe2-LPG (low-power graphics) architecture is a slimmed-down derivative of "Battlemage" that's optimized for low-power. It is meant for iGPUs (integrated graphics), particularly upcoming "disaggregated" Intel Core processors in which the iGPU exists on Graphics Tiles (chiplets). The iGPU powering the upcoming Core "Meteor Lake" processor is rumored to meet the full DirectX 12 Ultimate feature-set (something Xe-LP doesn't), and so it's likely that Xe2-LPG is getting its first outing with that processor. The Xe2-HPG (high performance graphics) architecture is designed squarely for discrete GPUs—either desktop graphics cards, or mobile discrete GPUs hardwired into laptops.

In the interview, Intel talked about how its first-generation Xe graphics IP had at least four separate product verticals based on the scalability of the product, and the specific application (Xe-LP for iGPUs and tiny dGPUs, Xe-HPG for client- and pro-vis discrete GPUs, Xe-HPC for scalar compute processors, and Xe-HP for data-center graphics). The company eventually axed Xe-HP as it felt the Xe-HPG and Xe-HPC architectures adequately addressed this segment. With AXG (accelerated compute group) being split up between the CCG (client computing group) and DCG (data-center group); Xe2-LPG and Xe2-HPG will be developed primarily under CCG, with a client and pro-visualization focus; while Xe-HPC will be developed as a scalar-compute architecture by DCG, which effectively leaves the Intel Arc Graphics team with just two verticals—to deliver a feature-rich iGPU for its next-generation Core processors, and a performance discrete GPU lineup so it can eat away market-share from NVIDIA and AMD—hopefully with better time-to-market.