Intel’s rise in the GPU market has been something of a welcome surprise, especially with regards to how poorly the market was faring in recent years. After all, with almost no competition from AMD, Nvidia became free to charge exorbitant prices for barely any generational improvements (in addition to going backward in terms of features!).
However, the tech giant has only dabbled in the budget to upper midrange territory thus far. Things could change however, and Intel might have a winning formula on its hands – assuming it acts proper.
Intel should launch its Arc Celestial GPUs by holiday 2026
Intel has been on a roll lately, springing back to form – in both CPU and GPU fronts. Its latest Core Ultra Gen 2 series for example, has finally managed to (mostly) close the gap between AMD and itself. As far as its Arc GPUs go, Intel has also made a tremendous amount of progress here.
Readers might remember the first generation of Arc discrete GPUs as being serviceable at best, offering middling performance at affordable prices. However, the first generation of cards fumbled, with mediocre performance and serious driver issues that made a host of games unplayable.
Thankfully, Intel has mostly managed to correct these issues, and the current gen Battlemage Arc GPUs are a massive step up compared to last gen. For starters, Battlemage sees an improvement across its Core Clocks, Memory Clocks as well as overall GPU memory allocated.
This, combined with improved drivers made Battlemage a very good midrange option for PC builders in 2024, and with Nvidia and AMD stagnating, now would be the perfect chance for Intel to swoop in and secure the high end market.
Assuming these generational improvements continue, Intel’s upcoming Arc Celestial GPUs could very likely go toe to toe with flagship products from Nvidia, and quite possibly win too. However, it must be released at the right time – that is, during the Holiday 2024 season, which could make it a very prospective purchase for would be PC builders looking to upgrade or build their new systems.
The RTX 5000 series has been woefully inadequate after all, and assuming that AMD’s RX 9000 series fail to live up to the hype it will fall to Intel to bring some real competition to Nvidia, and force the market to step back into the light.
The rise of a third competitor was desperately needed
The GPU market has developed into a duopoly of sorts – with Nvidia and AMD being the only real competitors at play. While AMD has had a few decent products over the years, they have historically trailed far behind Nvidia in terms of both popularity and features.
All of this had resulted in AMD reportedly moving away from the high-end GPU market, which gave Nvidia free reign to dictate prices however they pleased. This was seen in the form of the RTX 5000 series, with the 5090 being a painful example of the worst things we’ve come to see from Nvidia yet.
Molten connectors, software based performance trickery over real, hardware improvements and a defective production line are just the tip of the iceberg. Coupled with the absurd asking price of these cards, Nvidia is facing some serious heat from its user base.
Intel’s foray into this market could shape things out for the better. After all, competition breeds innovation, and having a third contender in the race would not only keep Nvidia in check, but also force AMD to innovate and release better cards in the long run.
Only time will tell, and rooting for the dark horse might just be what the industry needs.
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