Once you’ve sprung a leak, it’s hard to get it to stop. Evidence of this can be seen with the upcoming Intel Arc Battlemage graphics cards, which are steadily being entirely revealed before the expected actual big reveal later this year. The latest addition to the torrent is a new report that corroborates information from prior leaks, as well as providing information from an anonymous source with inside knowledge.
Intel launched its dedicated GPU brand, Arc, in 2022. The cards would never managed to climb onto our list of the best graphics cards, but they’ve provided a decent budget alternative to AMD and Nvidia. Its next lineup, codenamed Battlemage, is now apparently set for an end-of-2024 launch, according to both today’s leak and previous leaks.
The report comes from ZDNet Korea, which has spoken with a “representative from a domestic PC company”. The Xe2-powered GPUs are “expected to be released no later than the end of the year.”
This lines up with previous rumors that Intel is planning to get out ahead of Nvidia’s expected CES launch of the RTX 5000 graphics cards. It also makes sense that the launch would be happening soon, as ASRock was caught out leaking two B580 GPUs before Intel had a chance to even begin to tease their release.
Those are the biggest leaks we’ve seen so far, but as 2024 nears its end and we get closer to that rumored launch date, expect to see an ever increasing flow of fresh leaks.
While it’s exciting to think that we might get some new GPUs before the end of the year, it’s worth bearing in mind that the Battlemage GPUs aren’t expected to break any records. However, they could once again fill that slot of being decent budget options for lower-end gaming PCs.
Away from this potential GPU coup, Intel has been going through a rough patch recently. Its 13th and 14th generation processors have had issues with damaging themselves up, while its latest release, Arrow Lake (Core Ultra 200) requires updates to bring its performance back up to expectations.
Despite this, there’s plenty of choice for upgrading to the best gaming CPU for you as AMD has been hitting it out the park recently with its Zen 5 CPUs, as you can see from our AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D review where that chip romps home with stunning gaming performance.