Intel will announce its next-gen Battlamage desktop GPUs early to avoid the CES 2025 rush

We're on the cusp of a new GPU generation for PC gaming, and all signs are pointing to CES 2025 in Las Vegas in January as the place where we will see everything for the first time. NVIDIA is prepping to debut its GeForce RTX 50 Series, powered by the new Blackwell architecture, led by the GeForce RTX 5090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5070.

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AMD is set to announce its new line-up of RDNA 4-powered cards with what we assume will be the mid-range Radeon RX 8800 XT and Radeon RX 8700 XT combo. CES 2025 is also where many assumed Intel would debut its second generation of desktop Arc graphics cards with new mainstream Battlemage 'Xe2' products.

It's no secret that Intel's first Arc GPUs had a rocky launch regarding driver stability and performance and have failed to capture any meaningful market share from NVIDIA or AMD. A new leak suggests that Intel is prepping for a Battlemage debut in December, ahead of CES 2025.

This could be a smart move for Intel, as next-gen desktop Arc graphics would get lost in the sea of CES announcements. The leak comes from renowned leaker Golden Pig Upgrade via Weibo, where the leaker doesn't provide any specific hardware information other than Arc Battlemage GPUs are "performing brilliantly."

This could mean many things, but if Intel is again targeting the mainstream market - the home of the GeForce RTX 3060 and RTX 4060 - providing an alternative option at the same price point but with substantially higher performance could be a game changer.

Battlemage's "Xe2" architecture is already in the wild, as integrated graphics in Intel's mobile Lunar Lake chips have delivered a generational upgrade in efficiency and performance. So, it will be very interesting to see how it scales into a desktop GPU. Other leaks point to desktop Battlemage being built on TSMC 4nm, with up to 32 Xe2 cores, 16 GB of VRAM, and a 256-bit memory bus. There could also be as many as three different SKUs. However, one would assume that Intel would launch with two.

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