Early benchmarks of Intel's Arc Alchemist GPUs look promising, if speculative

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We don't even know what card it is and the test is odd but it still looks pretty alright.

Intel Alchemist GPU renders on a blue gradient background
(Image credit: Intel)

While there are absolutely no promises in life, let alone in oddly specific performance comparisons, early benchmarks of Intel’s Arc Alchemist GPUs are looking pretty good. Spotted by Tom’s Hardware, twitter account Tum_Apisak has tweeted out benchmarks for one of Intel’s upcoming DG2 graphics cards.

These readings really should be taken with a grain of salt. The Ashes of Singularity benchmark was run at the uncommon 1080p preset, which is a bit odd, and the whole test is known to slant results depending on the CPU used. This build had a Core i9-12900K and 32GB of RAM which certainly could be pulling some of the weight, plus this benchmark is also not the best when it comes to scaling for faster GPUs. 

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The Nvidia RTX 3070 and AMD RX 6700 XT side by side on a colourful background

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We don’t even know exactly what the card used in the benchmarking, but the results imply we could be looking at something around RTX 3070 or maybe even an RTX 3080 performance. This means it’s likely the higher end SKU being used, but again without that important information, plus a bit more, everything is speculation. 

But it’s inline with everything else we’ve seen so far. A leaked look at the likely PCB layout of the new DG2 cards also had us thinking we were looking at about the equivalent of Nvidia’s RTX 3070 and AMD’s Radeon RX 6700 XT, and Intel has said something similar in the past. So that’s another indicator of which Arc Alchemist GPU we’re probably looking at with these results. The cards also look like they perform really well in this video that Intel released after the initial announcement, but we won’t know for sure until we get to try out one of these new cards.

Intel’s new venture into high performance graphics with the Arc brand has certainly come during a fun time for PC parts. The Alchemist cards especially will prove very interesting in the current climate. If the new GPUs are able to take on Nvidia’s high end cards straight off the bat, it could be that team red and green have something to worry about. On the other hand, the lower powered 75W units are looking like a hopeful entry into the more affordable GPU market. We’re just hoping that the prices are as competitive as the specs. 

Hope Corrigan
Hope Corrigan
Hardware Writer

Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here.

No, she’s not kidding.