Although the date is not finally going to be what many wanted, it seems that Intel has everything ready to kick off this new generation of GPUs under its name. But this does not matter if it is not competitive and not if the price is not in line with said performance and market. As expected, we are seeing more light than darkness, this is all we know at the moment.
Intel is ready, DG2 will be presented at the most important event in the world
At least that is what has been released on this occasion. And is that Intel is going to present in style what is perhaps the most evolved product of the decade in the field of desktop graphics cards. Its new DG2 graphics card will therefore be presented at CES 2022, based on the Xe HPG design and architecture for gaming, it will be betting on several variants to compete directly with AMD and NVIDIA.
At least five startup versions will arrive from this DG2. All of them differ in the execution units and although there are no names, they have already been baptized by those numbers, these being: 96, 128, 256, 384 and 512, something that we already knew. What we did not have certainty beyond some rumor is of the version with 448 EU, which would arrive later and of which today we have interesting information.
Assuming that it is rumored that it will include the same lithographic process as its sisters (TSMC at 6 nm), the use of the 5 nm node that sounded behind the scenes is therefore ruled out, so Intel gets an improved process, but not cutting edge enough to compete with RDNA 3 and Ada Lovelace (It doesn’t really mean it either).
Ampere vs RDNA 2 vs Xe, Intel will measure up in mid and high range
The rumor is clear: this 448 EU DG2 will be a tough competitor for upper-mid-range gaming GPUs. With 3584 Shaders it seems that its performance will be very close to that of the current RTX 3070, while the lower-end 128 EU version would be somewhat ahead of the GTX 1650.
What can we expect from the more powerful 512 EU version? Well, if everything is correct (take out the salt shaker and add the salt as you like) the frequency of this DG2 512 would be approximately 2.2 GHz, it would have 16 GB of GDDR6 (not GDDR6X) coupled with 256 bits of bandwidth.
In terms of performance and consumption, we speak of between 220 and 250 watts as TDP and it would be between the RTX 3070 and the RTX 3070 Ti, so it could not compete in high-end with either of the two rival companies. It is rumored that it is not because of less advanced hardware than NVIDIA and AMD, a worse architecture as such, but because of the lack of optimization that the current engines have to work with the Tiles and that Intel would have some problem and delay with their drivers.
In any case the date is approaching, there is time to polish and work with the video game companies, we will see if they finally manage to compete decently in their first attempt.
