Intel Allegedly Scraps High-End Battlemage GPU, GeForce Alone At The Top

When we reviewed the Intel Arc B580, we remarked at that time that we were hopeful Intel would launch a bigger version of that product. The Arc B580 has solid performance (at least, as long as you pair it with a fast CPU) and reasonable power efficiency, but it's a relatively small GPU and simply can't compete on performance terms with enthusiast-focused cards from AMD and NVIDIA. Unfortunately, it seems like we'll have to wait until at least Celestial before we see any chips that challenge higher performance tiers.


We say that because highly-accurate Intel leaker Jaykihn has confirmed that BMG-G31, the long-awaited "Big Battlemage" GPU, was indeed canceled as rumored. In fact, according to Jaykihn, it was canceled way back in Q3 of last year, meaning that it was already decided that it would never be a thing for months before we even got our hands on the Arc B580.

This is disappointing because the GPU market is in a sad state. We applaud AMD for launching a next-generation graphics card with a price approaching reality, but let's be real: Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT cards are virtually impossible to find at the given MSRP, and stock seems a bit short, too. If Intel could have dropped a card with 50% higher performance compared to the B580, it could have been fairly competitive with the Radeon RX 9070, and this larger Battlemage GPU was rumored to ship with as much as 24GB of RAM onboard thanks to the use of 3-gigabyte GDDR6 DRAMs.


To see a faster Arc GPU than the B580, it looks like we'll be stuck waiting for Celestial, which is the codename for Intel's third-generation discrete graphics cards. Naturally, Celestial will be based on Xe3, specifically the "Xe3P" variant, according to leaks earlier this year. We'll probably see the first form of Xe3 in Panther Lake, launching later this year, but where Battlemage and Lunar Lake implemented the same Xe2 design, Xe3 might be considerably different from Xe3P.

The real question mark is whether Celestial will indeed be fabricated on Intel's own 18A process. A big new GPU would be a hell of a way to demonstrate the capabilities of Intel's 18A process, and it would be the first time in a while we've seen GPUs built on bleeding-edge semiconductor tech. If Intel cranks out a big Celestial part with a 384-bit GDDR7 bus it could be real contender against NVIDIA's finest, and we're completely here for it.