The Arc Professional B50 offers me hope that Intel is not giving up on GPUs

Intel at the moment has a zero % market share of desktop graphics playing cards, in keeping with Jon Peddie Analysis. And that’s hardly the corporate’s solely problem — a number of years of unhealthy information was capped off by kissing the ring and giving a ten % stake to the US authorities. However the newest Arc GPU has given me a tiny sliver of hope that somebody will step as much as Nvidia’s monopoly.

It’s the Arc Professional B50, and earlier than you say something, sure, that is an industrial GPU not meant for avid gamers. However the lower-priced various to the B60 exhibits that the corporate hasn’t given up on Battlemage, Intel’s second-gen discrete graphics structure. The $350, low-profile card doesn’t require a devoted energy rail, regardless of some neat methods like PCIe 5. This one’s packing 16GB of video reminiscence, 16 Xe cores, and 16 ray tracing models, 4 fewer than the B60 in every class, and 224GB/s of reminiscence.

Once more, this $350 card isn’t meant for avid gamers. It’s absolutely able to gaming, just like the surprisingly good Arc shopper playing cards launched late final 12 months. However its supposed objective is for industrial customers who need to do a bunch of rendering or AI computing with comparatively decrease price and energy necessities. In contrast to the B60, this one’s going out to not less than some reviewers like HardwareLuxx and Igor’s Lab. Which suggests somebody at Intel is fascinated with really getting this factor out to prospects.

Nvidia’s in-demand RTX 50-series playing cards are lastly getting to a degree the place you should buy one, assuming which you could afford one. However the firm is so dominant that AMD has principally deserted the highest finish of the market, and choices beneath the $300 USD mark are leaving loads to be desired. Virtually three years after the primary Arc playing cards debuted, the desktop GPU market nonetheless wants a shakeup…and Intel nonetheless wants one thing optimistic to develop on.