It has been more than 20 years since Intel launched its latest desktop graphics card, the Intel740, but as of yesterday the company is officially back in the game of the discrete GPU.
Intel teamed up with Asus and some other graphics card partners to launch their Iris Xe desktop GPUs for system integrators who want to include the new card in their pre-built PCs. The letters looks very different from the prototype Intel exhibited at CES 2020, especially those provided by the manufacturers different from Asus.
These new cards, originally codenamed DG1, they are part of Intel’s Iris Xe graphics family, which powers 11th generation Tiger Lake processors. The company has planned to launch several desktop solutions for a while, but Intel is still working on its Xe-HPG architecture, which will power the company’s future gaming GPUs and, preferably, rival Nvidia and AMD.
TThe cards that Intel has just released are not its gaming GPUs from companies like Nvidia and AMD. Intel says these Iris Xe desktop cards are designed to add value Desktop PCs “enhanced graphics, display, and media acceleration features. ”And the list of specifications seems to suggest only that: three display outputs; hardware video decoding and encoding acceleration, including support for AV1 decoding; Support for HDR display and artificial intelligence features; and 80 execution units (EUs) and 4 GB of video memory.
In other words, these new GPUs seem more focused on Desktop PCs for business or education. (Dell is the first company that comes to mind.) Intel said earlier that its Xe graphics will have up to 96 EUs, so these desktop GPUs may be the last stop Intel has to make before launching its gaming-oriented cards. .
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Last summer, Intel confirmed that its gaming-level GPUs will have hardware-accelerated lightning tracking. At CES 2021 the company said he was working on a way to enable integrated and unobtrusivethe graphics at the same time on PCs, which would allow users to maximize the discrete GPU for games and offload other tasks like streaming and recording to the integrated GPU. It is also working with Nvidia to implement scalable BAR on Intel CPU / GPU Nvidia combos, so users can get an increase in the frame rate of certain games.
But if Intel is working on this with Nvidia, they could potentially make their CPUs and GPUs communicate as well, as well as AMD’s smart access memory. Cocombined with the simultaneous harnessing of the power of a discrete and integrated GPU, not to mention lightning tracking, which makes a compelling case for Intel to be able to compete with Nvidia and AMD video cards. In averageOver time, the performance of these DG1 cards as part of a complete system may well set expectations for Intel’s gaming GPUs.