Intel Arc

According to Intel, the brand is named after the concept of story arcs found in video games. Each generation of Arc is named after character classes sorted by each letter of the Latin alphabet in ascending order. They begin with A, then B, then C, and so on. The first generation is named Alchemist, while Battlemage, Celestial and Druid are the respective names for the second, third and fourth Arc generations. == Graphics processor generations ==

Alchemist for scale Developed under the previous codename "DG2", the first generation of Intel Arc GPUs (codenamed "Alchemist") released on March 30, 2022. It comes in both add-on desktop card and laptop form factors. TSMC manufactures the die, using their N6 process. Alchemist uses the Intel Xe GPU architecture, or more specifically, the Xe-HPG variant. Alchemist supports hardware-based ray tracing, XeSS or supersampling based on neural networks (similar to Nvidia's DLSS and AMD's FSR), and DirectX 12 Ultimate. Also supported are DisplayPort 2.0 and overclocking. AV1 fixed-function hardware encoder is included in Alchemist GPUs as part of the Intel Quick Sync Video core. Intel confirmed ASTC support has been removed from hardware starting with Alchemist and future Arc GPU microarchitectures will also not support it. Arc Alchemist does not support SR-IOV Display connections: DisplayPort 2.0 (40 Gbit/s bandwidth) and HDMI 2.1 Desktop Mobile Workstation Battlemage Battlemage (Xe2) is the second-generation Xe architecture that debuted with its low power variant in Lunar Lake mobile processors that released in September 2024. On December 3, 2024, Intel announced two Arc B-Series desktop graphics cards based on the Xe2-HPG graphics architecture. Desktop Workstation Future generations Intel has revealed future generations of Intel Arc GPUs under development: Celestial (Xe3P), and Druid (Xe4). Additionally, Panther Lake series iGPUs will be based on the Xe3 architecture. == Intel XeSS ==

Intel XeSS is a real-time deep learning image upsampling technology developed primarily for use in video games as a competitor to Nvidia's DLSS and AMD's FSR technologies. Additionally, XeSS is not restricted to Arc graphics cards, similar to FSR. It utilizes XMX instructions exclusive to Arc graphics cards, but will fall back to utilizing DP4a instructions on competing GPUs that have support for DP4a instructions. XeSS is trained with 64 samples per pixel as opposed to Nvidia DLSS's 16 samples per pixel (16K reference images). XeSS 3 supports Multi-Frame Generation (MFG), similar to DLSS 4. This feature is exclusive to Intel Arc graphics cards, and will be supported on both Arc Battlemage and Alchemist series cards. Games that support XeSS 2 will support XeSS 3 at launch of XeSS 3. == Issues ==

Drivers Performance on Intel Arc GPUs has suffered from poor driver support, particularly at launch. An investigation by Gamers Nexus discovered 43 known driver issues with Arc GPUs, prompting a response and acknowledgement of the issues from Intel. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger also blamed driver problems as a reason for Arc's delayed launch. A beta driver from October 2022 accidentally reduced the memory clock by 9% on the Arc A770 from 2187MHz to 2000MHz, resulting in a 17% reduction in memory bandwidth. This particular issue was later fixed. Intel provides an open source driver for Linux. Intel does not officially support Intel Arc for Windows Server operating systems, except the Intel Arc Pro. DirectX 9 compatibility As of the Alchemist generation, Arc only includes direct hardware support for the DirectX 11 & 12 and Vulkan graphics APIs, with the older DirectX 9 & 10 and OpenGL APIs being supported via a real-time compatibility layer built into Intel's graphics driver. As a result, Alchemist GPUs perform noticeably worse than competing Nvidia and AMD GPUs in software that can only use these older APIs, including multiple DirectX 9-based esports games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends and StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. There is also a performance gap between DirectX 11 and DirectX 12. A December 2022 driver update improved Arc compatibility and performance with DirectX 9-based games. According to Intel, the driver update made Arc GPUs up to 1.8x faster in DirectX 9 games. A February 2023 driver update further improved Arc's performance on DirectX 9-based games. Legacy BIOS compatibility Intel Arc requires a UEFI BIOS with resizable BAR support for optimal performance. UEFI Class 1 and Class 2 BIOS are not supported by Intel Arc. == Footnotes ==