New photos of the actual Intel Arc Alchemist graphics cards emerge

Moore’s Law Is Dead shares new photos of the upcoming desktop Arc Alchemist graphics cards from Intel.

It should be noted that the YouTuber has previously posted photos of the early Intel Xe-HPG engeering sample as well as renders of the supposed preliminary reference design . This time around, the new leak does not feature renders but actual photos of the flagship Arc Alchemist graphics card, possibly in its pre-production state. We might also be looking at Arc Alchemist reference cards, should Intel decide to sell them.

Intel Arc Alchemist (DG2-512EU), Source: Moore’s Law is Dead

We can immediately see differences in the PCB layout compared to the engineering sample, further confirming that this is a newer version of the DG2-512EU based model. Unlike the engineering sample, this card features a black PCB and silver shroud, a visible upgrade from green PCB and black shroud as seen on the previous unit. There has been no change to the power input though, it appears the flagship desktop model will only require 8-pin and 6-pin power connectors (estimated TDP at 225W). With the introduction of the PCI-Express 5.0 standard, power supply and graphics card manufacturers will be using a new Gen5 power connector . It is unclear whether Intel has plans to introduce this connector to Arc Alchemist GPUs though.

The 512EU model is equipped with 4096 FP32 shading units and up to 16GB GDDR6 memory. The card is set to compete with (at least) NVIDIA RTX 3070 and AMD Radeon RX 6700 graphics cards, although some estimations put the Alchemist performance even higher.

Additionally renders of the slowest desktop variant featuring DG2-128EU GPU have been shared. While these are not real photos, the YouTuber claims to have seen the actual graphics card. Since his previous renders were almost an exact match with the real preproduction cards, there is no reason to expect this low-end model to be any different.

Intel Arc Alchemist (DG2-128EU), Source: Moore’s Law is Dead

The Arc Alchemist DG2-128EU model is to feature 1024 FP32 shading units and up to 8GB of GDDR6 memory. It should have a TDP of around 75W, making it an interesting alternative to NVIDIA Turing GTX or AMD RDNA1 GPUs.

Intel Arc Alchemist (DG2-128EU), Source: Moore’s Law is Dead

Intel Arc Alchemist based on Xe-HPG microarchitecture is now set to debut in the first quarter of 2022, except those would be the mobile variants. The most recent rumors suggest that desktop models are not to launch till the second quarter next year. However, Intel is more than likely to announce its desktop card sooner.

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