We have been speculating about the arrival of Intel Arc Alchemist, the first generation of Intel graphics adapters, with which the chip giant will bring a little more movement, and therefore joy , to a market that is now shared between NVIDIA and AMD. And it is that, regardless of whether we are more or less satisfied with the work of both companies, the entry of a new actor is always good news for users.
Along with the confirmation that Intel Arc was a reality, we also learned that, from the start, the project had planned the first four generations of it, Alchemist, Battlemage, Celestial and Druid, which which made it clear to us that Intel’s commitment was firm, with a work plan of several years, and that at some point or the end of 2021 or 2022 we will see the first models of Intel Arc Alchemist and, with them, be able to calibrate more adequately the position that Intel can obtain in this market.
We didn’t start from scratch for this purpose either, of course. Despite the fact that very early on, some voices claimed that the first generations of Arc would target the entry and medium ranges, the first leak of Arc Alchemist’s technical specifications showed us that not at all, that since its arrival on the market, Intel intends to gain a foothold in the high range, although with a sufficient variety of models to cover different segments.
A key element for this, to be able to aim for the high range, is not related to the number of computing units or RAM memory that it incorporates, but with the intelligence that is in it… more specifically in artificial intelligence . NVIDIA and AMD have put a lot of time and work into their DLSS and FSR technologies, respectively, so Intel couldn’t come up empty-handed in this respect. And as we told you a few months ago, together with Intel Arc Alchemist, XeSS (Intel Xe Super Sampling), its own AI-based resampling system, will also debut.
And what does this mean? Well, according to all the information we have so far, Arc Alchemist, at its highest range, will compete with the RTX 3060 and 3070, and that for performance it could even surpass the RTX 3070 Ti. In these aspects, however, it is advisable to be cautious, so we will have to wait for the first units to arrive to see how they perform in the real world.
And when will that be? Well, Intel has finally given signs and, as we can read in Wccftech, Intel Arc Alchemist dedicated graphics for desktop systems will hit the market during the second quarter of this year. As for the models for workstations, they will have to wait three more months, until the third quarter of 2022. The company has made these dates public during an investor meeting in which the plans for this fiscal year of the company were discussed. .
As we told you a few weeks ago, the graphics card market is maintaining a downward price correction (or normality, we could say) in the face of an absolutely insane 2021. And if we take into account Intel’s plans, which include producing and bringing to market more than four million units of Arc Alchemist adapters, we have reason to believe that 2022 will be a good year for those who want to change of graphics, although it also has other alternatives…
Project Endgame
And what alternatives are those?, you may be wondering. Well, at the moment, nowadays, faced with the difficulty (until recently it was impossible) to buy a graphics card for a reasonable price, it is to have a basic model and, in order to be able to play properly, opt for a gaming service on the Internet. cloud like GeForce NOW, Xbox Cloud or Google Stadia. And although these three services have very different experiences, it seems that Intel has decided to try its luck in that arena, with its own cloud gaming service.
The only thing we know about it, at the moment, is that the plans are for the service to debut this year and, obviously, that it will rely on Arc Alchemist, and that from the outset they put the focus on low latency as a fundamental aspect for a positive gaming experience. However, we can imagine that of the existing models, the one that Project Endgame will reproduce will be the one offered by NVIDIA and that these days it is celebrating its first two years.
This is, without a doubt, another piece of very good news, for several reasons. The first, of course, is toenrich the ecosystem of cloud gaming platforms, something that until a few years ago seemed still far away, but which today is already a perfectly operational reality, since which can be accessed by millions of users. And another reason is that Project Endgame can serve both Intel and users to check the performance that can be expected from Arc Alchemist.