Hot GPU rumour time: Intel may follow AMD in just focusing on the mainstream market with its next-gen Battlemage chips

We're barely two weeks into 2024 but the latest rumours surrounding the next generation of GPUs are already in full swing. And the claim this time is that Intel's next graphics architecture, Battlemage, won't be competing against the likes of the RX 7900-series or RTX 4080, but may instead focus on mainstream sales. As that's where the bulk of GPU sales are anyway, it would hardly be totally surprising if true, but it'll be disappointing if we have to wait another two years before there's a real third contender for the GPU halo crown.

That is what's been claimed by YouTube channel RedGamingTech, at least. An earlier video of theirs suggests the biggest Battlemage chip would have 56 Xe cores, up to 3GHz for the boost clock, and as much as 116MB of L2 cache connected to a 256-bit memory bus.

Now, it's suggesting that while the earlier core details were correct, the cache and memory wasn't. Instead, the top-end Battlemage GPUs would have a 192-bit memory bus, 8MB of L2 cache, and 512MB of 'Adamantine' cache. Ada-mada-what? Believe it or not, that's a genuine thing and was unveiled in an Intel patent we've written about before. It's a Level 4 cache layer for CPUs but one that can also be accessed by the integrated GPU.

So what's it doing in a discrete GPU? Well, it would act like AMD's Infinity Cache in its RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 chips, helping to reduce the number of times the VRAM needs to be requested for data.

However, despite all of that, RedGamingTech is also suggesting that there's a good chance that Intel won't actually bother releasing this chip, because the profit margins aren't going to be particularly good. Instead, it will focus on delivering a much smaller GPU, one with 40 Xe cores, with 18MB of L2 cache, no L4