Intel Arc, the company’s first gaming GPUs, will appear in 2022

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Intel has chosen a name for its high-performance consumer graphics products: Intel Arc. The brand will cover the hardware and software aspects of high-end graphics cards, as well as services.

The first Arc GPUs, codenamed Alchemist, will arrive in the first quarter of 2022 for desktop and laptop computers as Intel looks to take on NVIDIA and AMD. Intel also revealed the codenames for later generations of hardware: Battlemage, Celestial, and Druid.

Alchemist GPUs will support hardware-based ray tracing, network shaders, variable rate shaders, and Direct12 X Ultimate. Intel claims it will be able to “AI-driven super sampling” as well. That certainly appears to be the company’s role in NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Super Sampling upgrade technology, which enhances accuracy while reducing stress on GPUs.

Alchemist cards are based on the Xe-HPG microarchitecture, which is a mixture of Xe LP, HP and HPC microarchitectures. Intel says the Xe-HPG “will provide scalability and computing efficiency with advanced graphics features.” Intel’s dedicated Iris Xe graphics cards, which were mainly geared towards pre-built laptops and desktops, are based on the Xe LP architecture. Intel says it will share more details about the first Arc products later this year.

Intel also gave a sneak peek at the Arc graphics in action. In a video, he showed games including Forza Horizon 4, Psychonauts 2, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (or PUBG: Battlegrounds, to be exact), and Metro Exodus working on the technology. And yes, it looks like GPUs can run Crysis Remastered Trilogy.

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