Update!
Intel has been in touch to confirm that the images released was actually a ‘community created’ generation rather than issued by Intel China. Intel has been in touch with us to say:
Intel China mentioned our upcoming Intel Xe graphics product in a post and included a video pulled from @IntelGraphics handle, what they didn’t do was call out the video they posted was not showing actual Intel Xe product but a community generated concept design of a graphics shroud. See original Intel graphics tweet here
May we thank Intel for getting in touch with us for clarification on this matter.
Intel Xe
With all the news currently surrounding both the new Nvidia and AMD graphics cards on the way, it’s quite easy to forget that Intel is also planning to get into the mix. While no consumer-level graphics cards are expected this year, 2020 is set to be their first real swing in a market that’s ripe for another major manufacturer. Intel, AMD and Nvidia all fighting it out for our graphics card money? Sounds good to me!
Following a post on China’s ‘Weibo‘ social media site, however, images and specifications have been revealed that may give us some significant clues as to what we can expect from the GPUs. The short version is, it sounds great!
Intel China
Now, from what we can ascertain, this is the official Weibo account for Intel in China. As you can see above also, the post included a video of the ‘Xe’ graphics card rotating. Sadly, due to incompatibilities, we couldn’t get this video to work here, but you get the idea. This is a pretty substantial post.
However you look at it though, the post does drop some pretty major hints. Firstly, that a non-consumer graphics card may release before the end of the year featuring a 10nm design and with ray tracing hardware. In addition to this, however, it’s also suggested that the consumer release (expected in 2020) will feature a 7nm design with ray tracing technology. In other words, they’ll be taking the best that both AMD and Nvidia have to offer.
What Do We Think?
Whether this (including the images) forms to be the consumer Intel Xe graphics card release is still very much open to speculation. Yes, it might have come from an ‘official’ Intel channel. There is, however, still a lot of time to go between now and Summer 2020. Things can change!
I do, however, firstly hope that they retain the look because it’s fantastic. If they can, however, also manage to combine some of the best technology that Nvidia and AMD use as their flagships, it could prove to be incredibly interesting indeed. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this one!
What do you think? Are you interested in Intel’s graphics cards? Will you consider delaying an upgrade to see how good they are? – Let us know in the comments!
