We’ve heard little to nothing from Intel on the current status of its Arc Battlemage graphics cards, with the company likely adopting a more cautious communication strategy following the tumultuous launch of Alchemist. However, this hasn’t stopped team blue fellow Tom Petersen from sharing an update at CES 2024.
Much as Intel has worked hard to improve Arc A-Series performance, its first-generation pixel pushers are still a ways off from truly disrupting the race for the title of best graphics card. With lessons learned, though, Battlemage could prove to be an entirely different affair.
Speaking with PCWorld at CES 2024, Petersen was asked about the current state of Arc Battlemage. In response, he said, “about 30% of our engineers are working on Battlemage, mostly on the software side because the hardware group is on to the next thing.” That ‘next thing’ is likely Arc Celestial, which we should see emerge in the next few years.
Elaborating further, Petersen explains, “Battlemage has already had its first silicon in the lab, and there’s more good news coming but I can’t talk about it right now.” Here, he’s referring to the fact that the technical specifications for Arc B-series GPUs have been set in stone for some time, which may be less ambitious than previously imagined.
Providing a potential Arc Battlemage release date, Petersen “hopes” that we’ll see graphics cards launch before CES 2025. Airing on the side of caution, however, he caveated this with a knowing “but don’t take my word for it.”
In lieu of new graphics cards, Intel has shared some other announcements at CES 2024. We sat in on Pat Gelsinger’s keynote discussing why AI PCs matter, and went hands-on with the MSI Claw, the first Intel Arc and Core Ultra handheld.