An upcoming Battlemage discrete GPU, which will compete against the best graphics cards, has been benchmarked in Geekbench, giving us our first taste of what Intel’s next-gen GPUs might offer. Discovered initially by Benchleaks, the listing highlights a Core i5-13600K test setup paired with an “Intel Xe Graphics Ri” graphics card featuring 160 CUs and 12GB of video memory.
The GPU carries the 8086:E20B PCI ID, which coincides with Battlemage entries from a Linux driver. The PCI ID confirms that the GPU that emerged in Geekbench effectively carries the Battlemage G21 silicon. We’ve already seen the G21 in different shipping manifests, so it’s evident that Intel’s likely sampling it to its partners.
As is the norm with Geekbench spec sheets, the GPU specs are vague and don’t tell much about the GPU. Geekbench uses the term “Compute Units” to derive the GPU’s core count. Intel does not use compute units for its terminology; instead, it coined the term “Xe Cores” for its GPU core specifications. Therefore, 160 CUs is equivalent to 20 Xe2 cores.
The specs that are clear are the frequency and memory. This prototype Battlemage GPU appears to have a maximum clock speed of 2.85 GHz and a memory capacity of 12GB, lining up with previous leaks and rumors that Battlemage would feature 12GB of memory.
The Battlemage G21 GPU scored 97,943 points in the OpenCL score. By comparison, this is only 1,000 points better than the mid-range Arc A750 and slower than Intel’s Arc Alchemist flagship, the Arc A770. Obviously, take this information with a grain of salt. There are simply way too many variables to make this benchmark a good indicator of actual performance from the future production variants of Battlemage we will see. Battlemage is obviously still in pre-production form, and the software for it is probably not finalized.
Given the specifications and the Geekbench score, the G21 will likely power mid-range Battlemage GPUs. Intel reportedly plans to launch Battlemage before the holiday season, so it shouldn’t be long until we see what Intel brings to the GPU market.
