New images of an Intel Arc Alchemist engineering sample just leaked, giving us a lot of insight into the upcoming desktop GPUs.
This isn’t the first sample of Arc Alchemist that we’ve seen so far, but it might be the clearest one yet, showing the shroud, the fan setup, the ports, and even the full printed circuit board (PCB.)
Several images of the card have been unveiled by VideoCardz. The pictures show an engineering sample of the upcoming Arc Alchemist desktop GPU. On the surface, the card looks fairly simple and not unlike many AMD and Nvidia graphics cards. It has a black, rippled shroud and a dual-fan cooling solution.
A partial side view of the card gives a peek into the input/output situation on this GPU. The sample comes with three DisplayPorts and one HDMI port. It’s possible that the card might support the new DisplayPort 2.0 technology, as previous rumors pointed toward Intel working to enable it on their upcoming cards.
It’s nice enough to see the front of the Arc Alchemist GPU and learn more about its ports, but these leaked images take it one step further by showing us the full PCB without the backplate. This reveals eight memory modules, meaning that this model comes with either 16GB or 12GB memory. Having 16GB would imply that this is the flagship Arc Alchemist, but there is no way of telling for sure based on these images.
This engineering sample comes with six-pin and eight-pin power connectors, although VideoCardz points out that it should be possible to use a dual eight-pin setup if necessary. We can also see that the PCB is shorter than the shroud, leaving some room for extra cooling and additional airflow.
Previously, two samples of the Intel Arc Alchemist have leaked, and both have come from YouTuber Moore’s Law is Dead. The current sample seems to feature a mix of the previous two, combining the black shroud that was leaked first with an updated black PCB.
It’s encouraging to see new leaks about Intel Arc Alchemist, be it in the form of engineering samples or benchmarks, some of which give us more insight into the specifications of the GPU, and some that promise performance similar to that of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti.
Whether Intel Arc Alchemist will rank highly among the best graphics cards still remains to be seen when the card eventually launches. There is still no definite release date for Intel’s first gaming GPU, but the laptop versions are expected to arrive in the first quarter of 2022.
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