Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Look out AMD and Nvidia, Intel will make graphics cards in 2020

By

Intel confirmed on Tuesday, June 12, that it’s officially re-entering the discrete graphics market in 2020. Without providing any additional information, Intel simply linked back to a previous announcement revealing that former AMD Radeon graphics chip designer Raja Koduri is now Intel’s chief architect and senior vice president of the new Core and Visual Computing Group.

Intel’s entry would make the company the third-largest player in the GPU market following AMD and Nvidia. For years Intel stuffed its own onboard graphics into its processors, and at one time even attempted to enter the discrete GPU market. But right now, Nvidia dominates the market, residing at the top of the totem pole followed by AMD’s Radeon division. Intel apparently wants a slice of the GPU pie too.

Recommended Videos

Outside its gaming ambitions, Intel’s upcoming enterprise and datacenter-facing discrete GPU solutions are on the horizon. Its “Arctic Sound” and “Jupiter Sound” discrete GPUs were originally intended to spend their lives toiling away in data centers, crunching numbers in quiet obscurity. But Intel’s graphics chief obviously has other plans outside the datacenter.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!
Privacy Policy

https://twitter.com/TMFChipFool/status/982054901105782784

Related

Intel’s 2020 re-entry is fascinating news given that Koduri is a relatively recent hire, but his tenure at AMD — and before that at Apple — suggests this could have been the plan all along. Koduri’s departure from AMD for Intel signaled the company’s increased interest in improving the graphical functionality of its products. Recent leaks suggest that Koduri is the man behind the changes to the upcoming Arctic Sound GPU solutions.

Remember, Intel recently cozied up with AMD for a series of processors that feature onboard Radeon Vega graphics along with Intel’s integrated HD graphics hardware. This shift toward gaming hardware is likely part of a larger long-term strategy to diversify Intel’s offerings. It’s unclear what would happen to the AMD partnership when Intel becomes a direct competitor to AMD in the GPU arena in 2020.

According to Wccftech, not only is Koduri a crucial component of the project, but there are some serious manufacturing hurdles standing in the way of Intel’s GPU ambitions. Its current fabrication facilities aren’t exactly geared toward mass-producing gaming GPUs, so it’s likely an uptick in research spending could signal that the GPU project is kicking into high gear.

Intel clearly has a strong interest in pushing into the GPU market — the company has a number of graphics-oriented job openings currently listed on its jobs board — and now would be the time to do it. With shortages and cryptocurrency mining pushing prices higher and nudging more and more PC gaming enthusiasts toward integrated graphics solutions, maybe it’s time to have a third option for discrete GPUs. Having more options than just AMD or Nvidia could be refreshing for PC builders.

Updated on June 12: Intel confirmed 2020 launch window.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Jayce Wagner
Jayce Wagner
Former Digital Trends Contributor
A staff writer for the Computing section, Jayce covers a little bit of everything -- hardware, gaming, and occasionally VR.
Intel’s new $249 GPU brings 1440p gaming to the masses
An exploded view of Intel's Arc A580 GPU.

Intel is trying to redefine what a "budget GPU" really means in 2024, and it's doing so with the new Arc B580 GPU. In what Intel itself described as its "worst kept secret," the B580 is the debut graphics card in Intel's new Battlemage range of discrete GPUs, and it's arriving at just $249. That's a price point that's been relegated to 1080p for decades, but Intel says the B580 will change that dynamic.

It's a 1440p GPU, at least by Intel's definition. That's despite the fact that Intel is comparing the card to GPUs like the RTX 4060 and RX 7600, both of which are more expensive than the B580 and squarely target 1080p. Intel says it can deliver higher performance than these two GPUs while undercutting the price, all in an attempt to capitalize on 1440p gamers. "1440p is becoming 1080p," as Intel's Tom Petersen put it in a pre-briefing with the press.

Read more
Intel just stole a page from Nvidia’s DLSS playbook
hp omen transcend 32 review 13

Intel is giving its XeSS upscaling tech a huge makeover. The aptly-named XeSS 2 steals -- or borrows, if we're being generous -- a page from Nvidia's DLSS 3, which has been a staple feature of some of the best graphics cards you can buy. XeSS 2 comes packed with super resolution like the original version, but also frame generation and a latency-reducing feature called XeLL. And it's launching alongside the new B580 graphics card.

Point-for-point, XeSS 2 is basically identical to DLSS 3. The super resolution portion functions much in the same way as the original XeSS, providing you with various different quality settings to render your game at a lower resolution in order to improve performance. On the upscaling side, the major change is native support for DirectX 12 and Vulkan, which should open up XeSS to more games.

Read more
Intel Battlemage is almost here, but the wait isn’t over
Intel Arc A770 GPU installed in a test bench.

After weeks of rumors, it's finally a fact: Intel Arc Battlemage is on the imminent horizon, and the company is set to announce its next-gen GPUs on December 3. However, according to leaks, we're not getting the full scope of Intel Battlemage just yet. In fact, it may be a long time before we see Battlemage rank among the best graphics cards.

It's been a quiet year for Intel's discrete graphics department, but the last few weeks have been filled with leaks, and now, Intel itself confirms that we're getting some sort of an announcement tomorrow. It's unclear what exactly is being announced, other than the fact that it's Battlemage.

Read more