We've been reporting on the hoped-for for what seems like forever. The latest step towards that near-mythical eventuality is the emergence of packaging for the supposedly upcoming -walloping graphics card .
Interpreting these is something of an art in itself. But short version is that there are entries for packaging for something listed as "G31/C32", where G31 is thought to be Intel's internal code for a new bigger GPU based on its latest Battlemage or Xe2 graphics tech, as used in the yono all app you can (kinda) already buy.
Packaging for Intel's next GPU being made pic.twitter.com/H5Jmk5Y6a0
That's been cross referenced with a specifically Intel-listed entry from what appears to be the same importer that also refers to the "C32" item. The box listed in the manifest is about the same size as one that appeared referencing the B580 graphics
card a few months before that actually launched.
Oh, and the listing we're talking about here is actually from June. If Intel is following a similar timeline to that of the B580, Intel's big Battlemage gaming GPU could launch any day now.
There are, of course, a zillion caveats to all this. Those earlier manifests referred directly to the B580 and these new ones don't have an equivalent retail branding entry, which is speculated to be B770 for the new bigger and more powerful GPU, if it indeed exists. The Arc B770 nomenclature would align in branding terms with Intel Arc A770 from Intel's first-gen Arc graphics card series.
As for what sort of performance you might expect from G31/B770/whatever, the widespread consensus is that it sports 32 EUs where the G21 GPU in the Intel Arc B580 has 20 EUs or graphics execution units. It's also said to have 16GB of memory and a 256-bit bus.
Depending on clock speeds, performance scaling, driver quality and all that other stuff, 32 EUs could put big Battlemage roughly into Nvidia or territory at best, with perhaps being w69 slot a bare minimum for the GPU to be worth launching.
The problem for Intel is that the G21 chip in the B570 and B580 is already substantially larger and more expensive to manufacture than the GB206 GPU in the RTX 5060 Ti. G31 sounds like it could be 50% larger still, making it a very pricey GPU to manufacture if it's meant to be going up against an RTX 5060 Ti.
Even against the RTX 5070 it will be large and expensive to make, probably similar in those regards to the RTX 4080 and chips, AD103 and GB103, respectively. As I've observed previously, while it's likely that Intel is currently focused on establishing the Arc brand as opposed to making lots of money from it, selling GPUs with comparable production costs to a $1,000 RTX 5080 for around $400 in order to compete with the RTX 5060 Ti seems like a bit of a stretch.
Anywho, time will tell. We'd love to think that Intel is about to unleash big Battlemage and put the frighteners on Nvidia's complacent and yet very popular RTX 5070, but we'll believe it when we see it.
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