If you're gearing up to buy a new graphics card, chances are that you're probably hoping and praying that NVIDIA moves the price-to-performance curve with the GeForce RTX 5000 'Blackwell' series. While the GeForce RTX 4000 'Ada Lovelace' GPUs brought cool new features and an extremely efficient architecture to the table, performance per dollar barely moved below the $1000 mark, and many users are still rocking older GPUs as a result.
There could be compelling options coming from NVIDIA's competitors, though. AMD has its new RDNA 4 GPUs on the way, probably early next year, and of course, Intel's second-generation Arc graphics will be here before long. In fact, they may even be here sooner than you think, because despite the dearth of even a dial-tone on the Intel press line for Battlemage updates, the latest rumor out of China says it may show up next month.
We last heard rumor of Battlemage's release date way back in April, when we heard through the grapevine that Intel was looking to launch its next-gen GPUs before the so-called "Black Friday" holiday shopping even in the US. That would put it less than 19 days away, but this much more recent rumor from the usually-reliable Golden Pig Upgrade Pack simply says that the leaker is looking forward to desktop Battlemage next month.
The leaker also apparently says that the new GPUs will be "performing brilliantly", and if you're familiar with the first-generation Arc parts, you might be dubious at that. However, we've already tested the Xe2 graphics architecture, because it powers the integrated GPUs in Intel's Core Ultra 200V SoCs -- the "Lunar Lake" chips.
No doubt about it -- Xe2 is potent, and more than that, we didn't suffer any issues at all with Lunar Lake's integrated graphics. It's quite possible that Battlemage will launch as a potent and compatible product, with relatively mature drivers and a persuasive price point. It all depends on whether Intel wants to gain market share or make money with the new GPUs.
All rumors so far have indicated that the fastest Battlemage product is targeting a performance level somewhere in the vicinity of the GeForce RTX 4070. Those cards are currently going for $499. A newer GPU with the same performance level, perhaps with more memory, at a slightly lower price point, could really be a winner for Intel -- something the company direly needs at this point.