Today, Intel announced the branding for its upcoming dedicated graphics cards. They're going to arrive under the Intel Arc banner, and as we already knew, they'll be based on the Iris Xe HPG architecture. That's different from the Iris Xe LP that's found in ultrabooks and even in the Iris Xe Max dedicated graphics.

Indeed, while Iris Xe Max was meant more for productivity, Intel Arc is going to be aimed at gamers. It's going to be a tough competition. Intel should be able to put itself at an advantage by owning both dedicated and integrated graphics, but NVIDIA and AMD already have such a big head start in terms of graphics power."Today marks a key moment in the graphics journey we started just a few years ago," said Roger Chandler, Intel vice president and general manager of Client Graphics Products and Solutions. "The launch of the Intel Arc brand and the reveal of future hardware generations signifies Intel’s deep and continued commitment to gamers and creators everywhere. We have teams doing incredible work to ensure we deliver first-class and frictionless experiences when these products are available early next year."The first generation of Intel Arc products will support real-time ray tracing and artificial intelligence-based super sampling, two features that NVIDIA introduced with the RTX 20 series. Intel is also promising DirectX 12 Ultimate support, although that's no surprise. The codename for the first generation of Intel Arc products is now Alchemist (it was formerly DG2).The company isn't saying anything specific when it comes to performance, but it is teasing some gameplay videos.

Intel has a page set up to show off the Arc branding, and there are some videos to tease the project. You can even buy Intel Arc t-shirts and jerseys. Alchemist GPUs are set to arrive in the first quarter of 2022, and they'll be in both laptops and desktops. The next generations will be Battlemage, Celestial, and Druid.