Intel Readies Big Battlemage Onslaught With New GPUs Spotted In Runtime Code

Like the rest of the review circuit, we're fairly well enamored with Intel's Arc B-series GPUs. The Arc B570 offers killer entry-level value, and the Arc B580 offers solid 1440p performance without charging you extra for 'sufficient' video RAM. We'd really like to see Intel drop a bigger Battlemage GPU, and while that part has been rumored for a long time, it has not materialized.

A normally-reliable Intel leaker, Jaykihn, stated back in March that the BMG-G31 GPU was canceled in Q3 of 2024. However, the chip has continued to appear in leaks, including shipping manifests, and now, Intel's own Compute Runtime. Indeed, commit ff38005 to the Github, by JablonskiMateusz, is explicitly labeled "feature: add support for release 20.2 (BMG G31)".

It doesn't get a lot more explicit than that. If BMG-G31 was canceled, why would Intel be adding support to its public compute ...