Update: Intel Arc Alchemist desktop GPUs are now tipped for a summer launch.
Since its release in June last year, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti stock has been incredibly hard to come by — and doubly so if you don’t want to may massively over the $599 MSRP. And while the supply chain issues that have led to the global chip shortage could stretch on into 2023, it does look like there will be another viable GPU on the market soon for people who want 3070 Ti levels of performance.
According to new purported benchmark leaks from the Twitter leaker @Tum_Apisak, Intel’s upcoming debut flagship Arc Alchemist GPU will be more than a match for Nvidia’s powerful card, and could even eclipse it in a few metrics.
Link3070 Tihttps://t.co/fuBsKVId10XE 512 @ 2.1 GHzhttps://t.co/xaJVkPDH8n https://t.co/yaLSHkogpnJanuary 21, 2022
According to the data, the Intel Arc GPU scores 9,017 Mpix/s in the SiSoftware benchmark, compared to the 3070 TI’s 8,369 Mpix/s score. As you can see from the tweet, and the more detailed entries for both cards on the SiSoftware site, on other metrics, it’s 2-2, with the Intel card winning the Half-float and Single-float GP Compute battles, but losing convincingly on the Double-float and Quad-float Compute face-off.
Game, set and match?
So a win for Intel then? Well, maybe, but there are a number of things worth thinking about before you change the focus of your GPU search.
First, these are unverified scores, including one for a GPU that won’t actually be out for some time, so you should take the numbers with a pinch of salt.
Second, even if the numbers are accurate, they represent just a single benchmark and such tests aren’t always representative of real-world performance.
Even if they are accurate and reflective of real-world performance, you may still favor an Nvidia GPU thanks to features like DLSS and proven ray tracing performance.
Last, we don’t know anything about pricing. And even if Intel does decide that the best approach is to undercut Nvidia with a GPU pitched well under the 3070 Ti’s $599 MSRP, we know that actual real-world prices are nowhere near that thanks to the continued shortages.
Still, while there are plenty of reasons why the Intel Arc Alchemist could be disappointing despite this early hype, there is one strong ace card in its favor. If the benchmark score is legitimate, this is based on unreleased hardware and unrefined software. In other words, the numbers are only likely to improve with time, and that’s extremely encouraging.
We’ll be seeing the first Intel Arc Alchemist GPUs at some point in 2022, but it’s not clear exactly when. The official site originally said “Q1”, but those two characters have since been scrubbed from the site, suggesting a slip into spring or later.
