Intel Battlemage Xe2 GPUs Reportedly On Hold, Celestial Xe3 GPUs Might Be Delayed Too

Intel's next-gen Arc Battlemage Xe2 and Celestial Xe3 GPUs might possibly be delayed or even canceled based on the latest posts from Golden Pig Upgrade over at Weibo.

Intel Taking A Step Back On Arc GPUs? Battlemage Xe2 and Celestial Xe3 GPUs Reportedly Delayed

Update [5/10/2024]: In a new post, Golden Pig Upgrade clarified that he was talking about the mobile discrete GPUs and not the desktop parts. The desktop parts based on Battlemage architecture are still scheduled for launch this year.

Although there's no confirmation regarding a delay, the posts come from highly reliable leaker & insider, Golden Pig Upgrade, who has been accurate on countless occasions when it comes to his Intel and AMD mobility leaks. In the latest series of posts, he talks about Intel's plan regarding its next-gen Arc GPU family which will include Battlemage and Celestial.

The Intel Arc Battlemage "Xe2" GPUs will be a major part of the next-generation Lunar Lake "Core Ultra 200V" CPUs which are expected to debut later this year with wider availability planned by 1H 2024. We have already seen leaks of these chips with way faster performance than Alchemist and Alchemist+ chips which point out the use of an upgraded graphics architecture. This is still the Xe2-LPG or mobile version of the architecture while the higher-end discrete GPU variant known as Xe2-HPG is reportedly going to be delayed.

The leaker refers to there being no DG3 next year which is the discrete graphics card side of Xe2 "Battlemage" but, likely, all of this delay could also affect Xe3 "Celestial" GPUs too. This architecture is expected to debut in Intel's Panther Lake CPU family as the Xe3-LPG iGPU but it looks like the post suggests that there won't be Xe3 next year. It has already been confirmed by Intel that Panther Lake is on track for a 2H 2025 launch and will be using Intel's 18A, Intel 3, and an external (TSMC) process node.

• Intel DG1 (Gen 12.1 / Xe dGPU) - 2020 Release
• Intel DG2 (Alchemist / Xe-HPG) - 2022 Release
• Intel DG3 (Battlemage / Xe2-HPG) - 2024 Release?

Now it is not clear if this rumor suggests the delay of the discrete GPU families, the integrated GPU families, or both. It is likely that the discrete graphics development might take a step back since the company is focusing more on its integrated graphics capabilities. There have already been reports that Intel's Arc Battlemage "Xe2" Arc graphics cards are expected to debut by the end of 2024 & the GPUs have appeared within several patches, showing that work is currently ongoing.

So if Intel suddenly decides to delay or even cancel these chips, it will be a major letdown for many users & tech community since that would suggest that Chipzilla gave up on its GPU development plan just a year after introducing its first discrete product family. The reason is that Intel has done a really good job at fine-tuning the performance of its Arc products through continued driver updates which include optimizations, fixes, and day-0/1 support for many new games.

The tuning has also been largely helpful for the Arc iGPU side of things for products such as Core Ultra so it'll be indeed a waste of such an effort if the company simply gives up on the Arc GPU roadmap after achieving a series of positive results. We hope that's not the case and look forward to more official information from the company.

Intel ARC Gaming GPU Lineup