Intel's Battlemage GPUs might be a 'fireball' spell rather than just 'burning hands'

There is still hope that Intel's Battlemage graphics cards, theoretically due next year, could be a more compelling offering than some rumors have suggested.

According to the latest video from Moore's Law is Dead, the second generation of Arc products might offer up a beefier stack of GPUs than the YouTube leaker has previously asserted.

If you follow Moore's Law is Dead, you'll likely recall he has claimed that Battlemage may well end up as lower-end GPUs only when it arrives in 2024.

However, that tune has now changed - albeit only slightly.

In this new video, Moore's Law is Dead informs us that there's a chance the Battlemage line-up could finish up being quite similar to Alchemist, so it might range from low-end to middling GPUs (though still not challenging at the high-end, of course).

If things go well for the second-gen, the further theory is that perhaps Celestial or Druid, the 3rd and 4th-gen from Intel, might actually be a full stack of products, including effective competition for the high-end targeting AMD and NVIDIA's flagship graphics cards.

We're really getting ahead of ourselves there, though, and indeed the decision on Battlemage - and whether it'll be just cheaper GPUs, or a more fleshed out Alchemist style range - hasn't been made at Intel yet, Moore's Law is Dead cautions.

Upward Arc

There is some further good news in these latest musings from Moore's Law is Dead, too, on the subject of Intel's Arc drivers. As we've all seen, these graphics drivers have been considerably improved over the past year, and the YouTuber underlines that in his latest tests.

With an Arc A770 GPU, Moore's Law is Dead tried the latest drivers and found that Battlefield 2042, which only a month ago would run like it was on integrated graphics (if at all), played fine at 1440p resolution.

Deep Rock Galactic saw much improved performance, too, as did Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (the latter in fact rat well at 4K, with some settings turned down, whereas before, it didn't work at all).

These kind of improvements in the drivers also give us hope for a brighter future for Arc, if Intel continues to make them - and the frame rate boosts have been consistently coming with every driver release, so there's a seemingly good chance that'll be the case.

That said, elsewhere in the video, Moore's Law is Dead does make it clear that he feels Arc is still in beta, effectively, with some games remaining pretty glitchy. He further wonders whether the mistakes made early on by Intel - and episodes such as Starfield failing to work with Arc drivers - have caused irreparable damage to the reputation of the Arc brand.

Only time will tell, but the rumors around Arc A580 sales - the latest GPU from Intel's desktop stable - are shockingly bad right now.