Oh boy... here we are... back again with Intel Arc GPU department doom news. The last time I did this was the end of July, and I've had quite a few clicks, and phone calls and my personal Twitter has exploded since I reported that Intel's Arc GPU is so, so bad that it would be canceled altogether.
Well, here we are once again... and we have leaker Moore's Law is Dead reporting (once again, but this time with more meat, or should I say salt for the rumor mill) that Intel's desktop Arc GPU is so bad that, that Intel has canceled discrete Arc GPUs internally. MLID says it's not because Intel doesn't have the balls to hit the GPU market and compete against AMD and NVIDIA... but rather from a financial perspective (and I'm sure a lot more behind the scenes) they just can't do it.
As Tom says, it doesn't make him happy to tell his audience this news... as a third entry into the GPU market would be great for his channel. Great for me personally as a nerd and enthusiast, professionally as I cover GPUs professionally here for TweakTown (and now for over 12 years). But... Arc Alchemist, Tom wishes would compete against AMD and NVIDIA and that Battlemage would come in and smash it... but he knows it won't.
It's not good news, because the world seems to think Intel is invincible and that they can't take the hit. I've been what some would call "negative" on Intel Arc, but I'm just reporting the news. It's been a shit show from the outside so far, and it does NOT look like it's getting better, period.
MLID has talked to multiple sources over the weekend, which told him:
- "Arc is finished" -- executive level of Intel
- "the decision has been made" -- Intel source
- "Intel is ending Arc discrete" -- Intel source
Tom added: "once Alchemist is out, you should be surprised if they do anything besides.... maybe.... some limited re-productions of low volume early next year, and then that's basically it. There are high-level discussions going on regarding the cancellation of dedicated desktop Arc cards, datacenter stays for now, but the dedicated gaming cad line may be canceled before Celestial even gets a chance".
- Source 1: "I know AXG is putting on a good face for the public, but internally around here (Intel) there isn't a lot of optimism that Arc is going to survive"
- Source 2: "From what I am seeing, Battlemage is looking like it's going to be a single low-end or mid-range die".
- Source 3: "It's been a long night over here... Arc is finished".
- Source 4: "The decision's been made at the top to end discrete".
What happens from here? You may not be buying a high-end AMD Radeon or NVIDIA GeForce competitor from Intel, but rather they might wrap their Tiles into CPUs and APUs of the future. Intel's new 14th Gen Core "Meteor Lake" CPUs were delayed until the end of 2023 over issues with... well... it seems multiple issues all over the place right now.
