Download Intel Starts Shipping the First-Gen Arc Alchemist GPUs to OEMs for free

In August 2021, Intel announced that it will soon launch its own line of high-performance gaming GPUs to compete with AMD and Nvidia. Since then we have seen various reports and leaked images of the highly anticipated Intel Arc GPUs appear online. And today, the chipmaker confirmed that it has started shipping the first batch of Arc Alchemist GPUs to OEM partners for desktops and laptops.

During its presentation for CES 2022, Intel announced that it has started shipping the first generation of Arc Alchemist discrete GPUs to leading manufacturers such as Samsung, Lenovo, MSI, Acer, Gigabyte, Haier, HP, Asus and more. While the company didn’t say anything about the launch timeline for Intel Arc-powered machines, Lisa Pearce, the vice president and general manager of Intel’s Visual Compute Group, said they will. launch over 50 laptops and desktops powered by the Intel Arc GPUs the upcoming months.

For those who don’t know, Intel’s Arc GPU line will suit high-end gaming PCs and thin-and-light laptops on the market. Aside from the Arc Alchemist GPUs, Intel has also developed later generations of its GPUs codenamed Battlemage, Celestial, and Druid. While the first generation of Alchemist GPUs will appear early this year, the latter will hit the market in the second half of 2022.

As for the specifications and features of the Intel Arc GPUs, the processors are designed to deliver high performance for gaming and graphics-intensive creative tasks. They come with support for hardware-based ray tracing, variable speed shading, mesh shading and also support for DirectX 12 Ultimate.

In addition, Intel states that its GPUs will be able to upscale low-resolution graphics to high resolutions without putting a lot of strain on the graphics processing unit, thanks to XeSS, the company’s AI-based supersampling technology. In addition, the company has already confirmed that it will not limit the crypto mining capabilities of the upcoming GPUs.

As for the price and commercial availability of the Alchemist GPUs, there is no information from the company as of now. During the presentation, however, Intel confirmed that the Intel Evo laptops packing their new 12th-generation Intel Core H-series processors will require discrete Arc GPUs. Therefore, the company is likely to release mobile versions of the new Arc GPUs soon.