Discrete, Entry Level Graphics Cards From Intel leaked

When it comes to PC gaming everyone knows who Intel is – they are the company who (until recently) made the best CPUs on the market for gaming performance (and might do again soon).

So, any news regarding their further foray into the world of GPUs is welcome, especially when you consider the scarcity and competition of the current GPUs on the market today.

So far, details are pretty under wraps when it comes to the new discrete GPUs from Intel – but here is what we know so far.

The card is supposedly labeled an Intel Xe, and according to a benchmark found within Geekbench database by TUM_APISAK, the card itself seems to be a pretty low performing variant of a GPU.

The card will apparently feature 1024 cores, have a base clock speed of 1400 MHz, and will come loaded with 3 GB of VRAM memory. These same specifications were also found on the SiSoftware Sandra database a while back – so whilst this is still all rumor, it’s a pretty credible one at that.

As far as the type of memory that is going to be loaded into this card, we are still pretty unsure – but we hope that it will be GDDR6 just so the card can keep up (or at least offer an alternative to some of the competing cards released this year).

On its own, this piece of news seems a little bit boring – a new GPU from Intel that performs on the lower end of the gaming spectrum.

However.

We all know that discrete GPUs are used within laptops and other small, form factor PCs, and with Intel heavily expected to release a new line of Xe-HPG graphics cards next year, we could be seeing an early indication of what to expect from these new GPUs.

We know that the higher tier GPUs Intel is planning on producing are going to have hardware ray tracing, GDDR6 memory, will possibly be built on 7nm processors and be available in 2021 – so the real question is whether Intel is going to be able to go head to head with AMD in terms of CPU to GPU performance – and what’s more interesting, is whether they are planning more discrete versions of these cards to launch alongside desktop variants.

We could see Intel using 2021 to launch a line-up of their own branded gaming PCs and laptops configured entirely with Intel’s own CPU and GPU hardware that really put pressure on both Nvidia and AMD.

It’s still early days though, and nothing has been announced by Intel officially regarding this GPU leak or future plans for the release of these cards – but we can’t be far away from a proper reveal, and with CES just around the corner (and AMD in attendance promising big news), I’m sure that we won’t have to wait long.