Intel’s 14th-Gen Meteor Lake iGPU May Offer Ray Tracing Support!

While Intel’s upcoming Arc desktop graphics cards are understood to offer some kind of ray tracing support, given the overall lacklustre nature we’ve seen from their base hardware in leaked benchmarks, I think it’s already safe to assume that it’s almost certainly not going to be very good. – And, in fairness, this isn’t particularly huge criticism either as since its modern debut back in 2018 with the launch of Nvidia’s 20XX graphics cards, it hasn’t exactly set the gaming world on fire (yet(?))!

In terms of integrated graphics solutions (APU processors), however, I think most would agree that it was incredibly unlikely that this would ever see any kind of ray tracing support offered within the near or even medium-term future. Yes, yes, AMD’s laptop-based Ryzen 6000 CPUs kind of support it, but we’re talking strictly in terms of desktop processors which, quite frankly, we’d expect something a little more impressive from!

Following a report via Videocardz, however, information has appeared online which shocking suggests that the iGPU on Intel’s 14th-gen Meteor Lake desktop processors (due for release next year… maybe) will include some kind of ray tracing support, or, at the very least, ray tracing hardware acceleration!

Intel’s Meteor Lake CPUs to Offer Ray Tracing Support With its iGPU?

Now I’m just going to say now that I doubt we’re in the remits of ray tracing performance that will come anything close to approaching what is achievable on even the most basic ray-tracing compatible dedicated graphics card. – In this regard, I expect even the bloody awful AMD Radeon 6400 might have this iGPU beat! – Overall, the interest really boils down to the possibility that Intel’s 14th-gen Meteor Lake iGPU might just support it, period! – According to the source though, there are apparently more than a few hints that it will:

“Regarding support for HW ray tracing on Meteor Lake GPUs […] the code that determines his HW ray tracing support it seems that Meteor Lake GPU supports it as well as Alchemist / DG2 and Ponte Vechhio because there is no change.”

Now, again, just because it can support ray tracing, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be any good at it (see the aforementioned Radeon RX 6400). It’s certainly an interesting insight into what we might expect to see from Intel’s further development of Xe and especially so with its integrated graphics.

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!