Yesterday we reported on rumors that Intel could possibly be axing their Arc discrete graphics cards. Specifically it was noted that the “dedicated gaming card line may be canceled before Celestial even gets a chance”. Currently Intel is in the process of launching their Arc “Alchemist” graphics cards, with Arc “Battlemage” coming next year, and then “Celestial” after that. It seems Intel was quick to squash these rumors. Raja Koduri, Intel Executive Vice President put out this tweet initially…
Bumped into this beauty in Toronto volume validation lab.. getting ready for launch! pic.twitter.com/HReEfz1d2b
— Raja Koduri (Bali Makaradhwaja) (@RajaXg) September 11, 2022
In the tweet Raja posted a photo of Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition graphics card that was running at the Toronto volume validation lab, and he added that the GPU is still “getting ready for launch”.
Of course there were replies to this tweet and one interesting one came from GTechGeorge, who asked about Intel cancelling Arc after the first two generations. Raja had this to say, “we are 🤷♂️ about these rumors as well. They don’t help the team working hard to bring these to market, they don’t help the pc graphics community..one must wonder, who do they help?..we are still in first gen and yes we had more obstacles than planned to ovecome, but we persisted…”.
we are 🤷‍♂️ about these rumors as well. They don’t help the team working hard to bring these to market, they don’t help the pc graphics community..one must wonder, who do they help?..we are still in first gen and yes we had more obstacles than planned to ovecome, but we persisted…
— Raja Koduri (@RajaXg) September 12, 2022
Then GamerMeld replied saying specifically that the rumors were about Celestial, not the current generation and if Raja had any comments on future architectures. Raja replied with a slide of Intel’s Visual Compute Roadmap showing Celestial and stating that Intel is continuing to execute on this strategy.
Attached is what we said in Feb'22 and are continuing to execute this strategy. pic.twitter.com/rfIRjq4p5G
— Raja Koduri (Bali Makaradhwaja) (@RajaXg) September 12, 2022
What I also find very interesting is that Intel was so quick to deny these rumors. Companies typically refrain from commenting on rumors, but Intel was quick to respond to these rumors, which at the time of a lot of bad press makes sense. I mean are you going to invest in a current Arc graphics card if Intel is scrapping things in a year or so? Only hours after publishing our story yesterday, a PR firm from Intel reached out and pointed us to the above tweets. Lots of damage control for Intel, which does make you question things.
Remember Intel did sell off their Optane team sort of out of nowhere, even after next-gen products were being shown off months prior. I think another distinction needs to be made too, while the roadmap shows Celestial, it does not really distinguish between a legit discrete graphics card and say a GPU tile on a CPU. Does Intel plan to continue to try and make discrete graphics cards to compete with the likes of NVIDIA and AMD, or will we just see a “Celestial” GPU tile on an Intel CPU? I guess time will tell, I don’t think we are going to get any clear distinction from Intel.
