A popular YouTube tech channel has leaked what it claims are the first real-life photos of Intel‘s upcoming flagship Arc Alchemist desktop graphics card. The channel had earlier posted images of Intel’s early Xe-HPG engineering sample as well as realistic renders of the Alchemist’s reference design. While the first photo back in April 2021 showed off the main PCB of what’s said to be Intel’s upcoming GPU, the leaked renders in October showed off how the card is expected to look when it launches early next year.
A crippling chip shortage has rendered graphics cards almost impossible to buy over the past year. Whatever small stocks are available are being sold at exorbitant prices by scalpers and unscrupulous retailers. NVIDIA and AMD are still launching new GPUs amid the chip shortage, although the products remain out of stock at most retailers. The Alchemist will be Intel’s first piece of high-end discreet graphics hardware, but it remains to be seen if it will be available to retail buyers at launch.
The latest images come from a tech YouTube channel called Moore’s Law Is Dead, which had earlier revealed other tidbits about Intel’s upcoming graphics card. The photos show off what’s said to be a reference DG2-512EU card, possibly in its pre-production avatar. While the front-on view shows off the dual-fan design with Intel’s branding front and center on each fan, the rear-view seems to show a very different PCB layout to the engineering samples from earlier this year. The most significant difference is that the new unit appears to have a black PCB, while the earlier sample had a green PCB.
Renders Also Show Off The Entry Level Arc Alchemist GPU
The new images also suggest that the card will require the standard 8-pin and 6-pin power connectors, but it isn’t immediately known whether it will support the new Gen5 connector that is set to make its debut with the RTX 3090 Ti next year. The 512EU model is said to ship with 4096 FP32 shader units and up to 16GB of GDDR6 memory. Leaked benchmarks from earlier in the year suggest that it will compete with the NVIDIA RTX 3070 and AMD Radeon RX 6700, but some rumors suggest that the actual performance may be even higher.
Alongside real-life images of the flagship card in the Arc Alchemist range, Moore’s Law Is Dead also shared renders of what’s said to be the DG2-128EU, which is expected to be the entry-level model in the upcoming lineup. It will be a less powerful but relatively more affordable option that will sit a few steps below the 512EU and will feature 1024 FP32 shading units and up to 8GB of GDDR6 memory. The lineup also features cards with 448, 384, and 256 execution units (EU), but images and details about those models are not yet available.
Source: Moore’s Law Is Dead (via YouTube), VideoCardz
