Is 8GB of video RAM enough for your video card? That depends on a lot of factors, but with games like Borderlands 4 punishing mid-range gaming desktops, it seems like 16GB is fast becoming the standard for any kind of rapid performance. And whaddya know, it looks like there might be a new Battlemage Arc card coming soon.
The “BATTLEMAGE e221” was spotted in a boot log by Twitter user Tomasz Gawroński (via VideoCardz). That corresponds to a rumored Arc B770 card, which has been spotted elsewhere with a BMG-G31 processor and 16GB of video RAM. Considering that Intel is explicitly playing for the budget market, a higher-end option—one that might be more affordable than the latest 16GB cards from Nvidia and Intel—is exciting for gamers.
Intel’s second-gen discrete, consumer-level graphics cards have only two models so far: the B570 and B580, with 10GB and 12GB of RAM, respectively. They’ve both been well-received as value alternatives to Nvidia and AMD, but there hasn’t been a new model released since January. The explosive news of Intel’s partnership with Nvidia, bringing green-branded integrated graphics to Intel chips, has many wondering where Intel stands on its plans for its own discrete graphics, which have struggled to find any foothold in the market.
Intel says that its existing roadmap is unchanged by the upcoming Nvidia collaboration, and it has continued to release Battlemage cards on the industrial side, perhaps hoping to get in on the booming market for graphics in “AI” applications. But with less than half of the desktop cards released in the A series that debuted in 2022 and 2023, I think it’s safe to say that plenty of people have been wondering where those higher-end Battlemage GPUs have been hiding.
A scant mention in a boot log is about as much as we’ve seen of that B770 model, even as it’s been highly anticipated by some. Here’s hoping it lands sooner rather than later.