Intel Arc Battlemage, Team Blue’s second generation of discrete graphics cards, targets the entry-level to mid-range market, coming two years after the first Intel Arc ‘Alchemist’ series back in 2022. And now, following an official announcement, the Intel Arc Battlemage release date has been confirmed, all the while Nvidia and AMD aim for an early 2025 release.
Now that we’re coming toward the end of 2024, Battlemage sneaks in just ahead of the competition. Last month, a rumor revealed the next-gen Arc GPUs are expected to launch in December, and that turned out to be the case with Intel’s official announcement taking place on December 3rd.
Intel Arc Battlemage release date
In an announcement stream on the Intel Gaming YouTube channel, both the Intel Arc B580 and Intel Arc B570 were announced. The B580 was the card getting the most love, showing off benchmarks and comparisons to the likes of the RTX 4060 and RX 7600 – outperfoming the pair of them in both raster and ray tracing tests. As we can see below, the new B-Series cards will be released:
- Intel Arc B580 release date: December 13th, 2024
- Intel Arc B570 release date: January 16th, 2025
These are the only two GPUs revealed so far. A follow-up to the former flagship A770, presumedly the top-spec B770, has not been officially announced and earlier rumors suggest it has been delayed and “will not launch anytime soon.”
Prior rumors of the launch suggested before Black Friday, sometime in Fall/Autumn 2024. This came from Andreas Schilling, representing ComputerBase, suggesting that partners of Intel have been talking about this release window. However, it looks like Team Blue may have just missed out on that window.
This new generation represents a significant step forward in Intel’s graphics technology, promising to redefine gaming and computing experiences. However, there is speculation that it could be the last as far as dGPUs go; (former) Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger details “less need for discrete graphics” in a Q3 2024 earnings call, with more focus on integrated graphics expected.
Has Intel Arc been released?
Intel has indeed released its first GPU generation, known as Intel Arc Alchemist (the A-Series). Looking back, here’s how the first Alchemist generation timeline looked:
- Intel Arc A380 – June 14, 2022
- Intel Arc A310 – September 28, 2022
- Intel Arc A580 – October 10, 2023
- Intel Arc A750 – October 14, 2023
- Intel Arc A770 – October 14, 2023
So, Battlemage (the B-Series) comes over two years since the original line-up, with many improvements such as the Xe2 GPU architecture, XeSS 2 upscaling, and now even XeSS frame generation.
Intel Arc Battlemage specs
Intel has confirmed the specifications for the two current Battlemage GPUs. It seems that they understand that 8GB VRAM isn’t going to impress anyone, so have a baseline for 10GB+ so far with the B570 as the entry-level for the time being. We expect to see more SKUs joining the series at some point in the future, though it is no currently clear how these will turn out.
Earlier rumored specifications of Intel’s Battlemage GPUs suggest significant improvements and advancements over its predecessor, the Alchemist GPUs. With up to 64 Xe2 cores, the Battlemage GPUs are expected to double the core count compared to the Alchemist GPUs, which had a maximum of 32 Xe cores.
This increase in core count could result in substantial performance gains in gaming and other graphics-intensive tasks. However, no currently-announced cards reach this limit, but there should be room for some high-end options such as a true successor to last-gen’s Intel Arc A770.
Intel Arc Battlemage price
As listed above, the pricing for the initial duo of Battlemage GPUs has been revealed:
- Intel Arc B580 price: from $249
- Intel Arc B570 price: from $219
Intel aims to offer better price-per-performance graphics cards compared to the competition with its Arc Battlemage GPUs. In fact, Intel says that the B580 graphics card “wins in value” and offers “25% better performance per dollar” compared to its close competition, the RTX 4060 and RX 7600.
As more information about the Intel Arc Battlemage GPUs becomes available (if Team Blue plans to expand its range beyond the B580 and B570) either through official sources or leaks, we will be able to gain an even clearer understanding of the pricing strategy and how it compares to AMD and NVIDIA offerings.
Has Intel announced Battlemage yet?
Yes, Intel has finally announced its Battlemage ‘B-Series’ GPUs in a recent live stream on YouTube. We were eagerly awaiting to see what Team Blue had to offer, and it looks like it has delivered – for the most part. We hope to see Intel’s relatively recent foray into discrete graphics cards gain more traction, especially with developments such as XeSS 2 and XeSS ray tracing now a reality – plus a long list of games now supported by the upscaling tech.
Will Intel Arc Battlemage be better than AMD or Nvidia?
Driver support is regularly getting better, closing the gap between the established Radeon and GeForce graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia respectively. However, it seems as if Intel yet again be targeting a more budget-friendly price bracket. We don’t expect to see any Battlemage flagship cards taking on their rivals’ flagships, but there is already plenty to talk about in the entry-level to mid range. AMD is likely doing something similar with the upcoming RX 8000 series, with no high-end card expected.
