Intel’s Flagship ARC Alchemist GPU With 32 Xe Cores Spotted in OpenCL Benchmarks, Max Boost of 2.1 GHz But Runs At Lower Clocks

Intel's flagship ARC Alchemist GPU-powered graphics card has been spotted within the Geekbench database once again. This time, the chip seems to be an early sample as it runs at lower clocks than the maximum frequency which is listed within the same benchmark.

The Intel ARC Alchemist graphics card can easily be identified with its 512 Execution units (4096 ALUs). The specific variant is mentioned to feature a maximum boost clock of 2.1 GHz but can be seen operating at a much lower 1.33 GHz within the JSON Data listed at Geekbench. As such, the GPU is running at 63% of its maximum performance potential, says Videocardz. It is likely that the variant is an early sample and still needs to be sorted out before we can see its full performance.

This particular ARC Alchemist graphics card sample was also tested on an older Core i5-9600K test platform. The performance itself isn't something to be excited about as the OpenCL score ranged between 65000-69000 points which is almost GeForce RTX 2060 performance. Once again, the Xe HPG powered graphics card isn't ready and not in its final state so the performance numbers here are pretty much useless for comparison against any modern-day graphics card.

Intel ARC Alchemist 32 Xe-Core Graphics Card Geekbench Benchmarks (Image Credits: TUM_APISAK / Benchleaks)

The top Alchemist 512 EU variant has just one configuration listed so far and that utilizes the full die with 4096 cores, 256-bit bus interface, and up to 16 GB GDDR6 memory featuring a 16 Gbps clock though 18 Gbps cannot be ruled out as per the rumor.

The Alchemist 512 EU chip is expected to measure at around 396mm2 which makes it bigger than the AMD RDNA 2 and NVIDIA Ampere offerings. The Alchemist -512 GPU will come in the BGA-2660 package which measures 37.5mm x 43mm. NVIDIA's Ampere GA104 measures 392mm2 which means that the flagship Alchemist chip is comparable in size while the Navi 22 GPU measures 336mm2 or around 60mm2 less. This isn't the final die size of the chip but it should be very close.

NVIDIA packs in tensor cores and much bigger RT/FP32 cores in its chips while AMD RDNA 2 chips pack a single ray accelerator unit per CU and Infinity Cache. Intel will also have dedicated hardware onboard its Alchemist GPUs for Raytracing & AI-assisted super-sampling tech.

The Xe-HPG Alchemist 512 EU chip is suggested to feature clocks of around 2.2 - 2.5 GHz though we don't know if these are the average clocks or the maximum boost clocks. Let's assume that it's the max clock speed and in that case, the card would deliver up to 18.5 TFLOPs FP32 compute which is  40% more than the RX 6700 XT but 9% lower than the NVIDIA RTX 3070.

Also, it is stated that Intel's initial TDP target was 225-250W but that's been upped to around 275W now. We can expect a 300W variant with dual 8-pin connectors too if Intel wants to push its clocks even further. In either case, we can expect the final model to rock an 8+6 pin connector config, The reference model is also going to look very much like the drone marketing shot Intel put out during the ARC branding reveal. That reference design was leaked a while back by MLID too. There're also talks about a custom lineup being worked upon by Intel's AIB partners.

The Intel ARC Alchemist GPUs are expected to launch in Q1 2022 with the desktop variants now rumored for a Q2 2022 launch. Expect Intel to share more details on ARC Alchemist GPUs & their next-gen Alder Lake-P/M laptop CPU lineup at CES 2022.

News Sources: Benchleaks, TUM_APISAK, Videocardz