When naming the different graphics cards, both NVIDIA and AMD use standards that help us identify whether one model is more powerful than another or what architecture they use. For example, NVIDIA begins the name of its gaming GPUs with the prefix RTX followed by the generation number, in the current case 30, and then a two-digit number that indicates the range and then the segment. In such a way that when we read RTX 3080 we know to place it within the range of NVIDIA products in an ordinal way.
Intel being a new company in the world of graphics cards and having recently revealed the ARC name, equivalent to the Radeon and GeForce brands. What we lacked was to know how they are going to name their graphics cards and although we do not have all the complete information we can get an approximate idea of what the name of each of their GPUs for gaming could be.
This will be the names of the Intel ARC GPUs
The following table belongs to an internal document that has been leaked by the insider momomo_us through his Twitter account. And we define the nomenclature of Intel ARC GPUs, where the first generation under the code name Alchemist will be seen in 2022 and that will be continued by the architectures baptized as Battlemage, Celestial and Druid.
Well, unlike NVIDIA and AMD where generations are defined by a number, Intel has decided to use a letter, so under ARC a ### will refer to the first generation of graphics cards, b ### to the second generation, c ### to the third, and so on. The letter that serves as a prefix is the same as the code name of the architecture used, so Raja Koduri will use different names than the conventional ones in the different generations of their ARC GPUs.
But what do the ### mean? At the moment we do not know and we can speculate on it. What we do know is comparatively where the range of Intel would be placed with respect to its direct rivals. Since the highest known official configuration is the one that has a hand-to-hand power with the NVIDIA RTX 3070 and AMD RX 6700 XT, we believe that the Intel ARC a700 and ARC a600 names for the configurations with 512 and 384 Execution Units are those with more numbers, since they are easy to remember and give the potential buyer an idea of the return to be expected.
Unfortunately we will still have to wait to confirm the final name that Intel will give, but we believe that when the second generation of the blue team gaming GPUs comes out, we will be talking about the performance compared between an Intel a700 and a b700. In any case, it is still too early to ensure the final nomenclature of the Intel ARC in full.
