We don’t know its performance, but now we do know what one of Intel’s TOP versions of ARC Alchemist graphics cards will look like. And it seems that those of Pat Gelsinger are going to bet on black as a key piece in the aesthetics of this card, but what more news can we see?
The photos of Intel ARC Alchemist
Without a doubt, Intel wants to surprise the world and although it has not been confirmed directly, we have strong indications that this will be the case due to the drivers leaked months ago. The problem is that in the photos and although it is seen that it will take three DisplayPort and one HDMIas physically the interface is the same as we have no confirmation of this fact.
Regardless of this, the card follows the heatsink scheme with two 9 cm fans with 9 blades that will rotate in the same direction and counterclockwise, where as a curiosity they will cool a radiator that has been oversized in front of the PCB. What we see is the supposed upper mid-range graphics card, mainly because it integrates a 8-pin and 6-pin power connectoralthough there is room to replace the latter with an 8-pin one.
The cover looks simple, with a few ripples across it and from the hardware we see we know it will include a backplate. This means that the PCB will have 4 anchor points and the remaining two belong to the cover at its end.
8 GDDR6 modules very close to the die
What is curious is that this graphics card has such a short PCB, even more so when the die is placed crosswise and not vertically. We have already seen its layout in previous articles, and it is rectangular, which is very curious if we take into account the layout of the VRAMs.
Four will be housed in the farthest area of the PCB and two on each side of the die, so we will have 8 x 2GB GDDR6 chips each in the higher versions and 1 GB in the mid-range of ARC Alchemist graphics cards, although the latter would not correspond to what was leaked last week, but it is technically possible.
It is surprising, however, that for the TGPs that they are going to have in this engineering sample that seems to be the last due to the finishes (minus the two vertical three-pin connectors that seem to be verification or sensors), they only have 8 power phases Y 17 voltage regulatorsnot to mention the two voltage controllers.
The problem is that we do not know what type of PCB we are looking at, whether type 3 with 12 layers or type 4. Perhaps it is the first due to the non-added elements mentioned, possibly the complete PCB is number 4, the most evolved and with it Bring to life the most powerful GPU in the ARC Alchemist lineup.
