We’re probably all anticipating the next generation of Nvidia RTX 30-series graphics cards, expected to be announced during the company’s September 1 special event. But only one day later, on September 2, Intel will announce its 10nm Tiger Lake mobile CPUs with Xe graphics.
Members of the press were invited to this September 2 event in July, and now Twitter user Hassan Mujaba has tweeted pictures of a new press pack for the event with a pair of headphones and a leaflet that states, “We are about to debut an all-new look and feel at Intel. Enjoy the exclusive sneak peek.”
Perhaps what should excite us most about these upcoming laptop CPUs is the inclusion of Intel’s new Xe graphics architecture. Tiger Lake CPUs will be the first we see of the new graphics architecture from Intel – one that will bring with it the possibility for discrete graphics cards that might eventually compete with Nvidia and AMD to find a spot in some of the best gaming PCs.
The latest Intel Xe news is that the company has confirmed that Xe-HPG GPUs will exist and have ray tracing capability. There’s still no clear information on whether these GPUs will exist as discrete graphics cards available for purchase for DIY PC builders or only as mobile GPUs for laptops.
— Hassan Mujtaba (@hms1193) August 27, 2020
We’ve previously seen leaked slides that seemed to imply that any discrete, PCIe GPUs we see are “only for the SDV, and not a product”, but this doesn’t mean there won’t be any discrete Xe GPUs full-stop. The Intel Xe-HPG microarchitecture was only announced and confirmed by Intel much further down the line than when this leak came to light, remember.
A non-Nvidia, non-AMD gaming GPU available for purchase as a discrete graphics card for DIY builders would be a development, to say the least. And considering we’ve already seen even a low-power, Xe-powered Tiger Lake laptop run Battlefield 5 on high settings, the high-powered Xe-HPG GPUs are sure to impress. Let’s hope this “all-new look and feel” that we’ll see on September 1 includes some splashes of Intel Xe for good measure.