We have been hearing for some time that Intel is working on its own line of discrete graphics solutions. Back in October of 2019, Raja Koduri even shared an image of his license plate with “THINKXE” on it. The new XE architecture will be integrated on both discrete cards and CPUs, as its inclusion was recently announced for their 11th Generation Tiger Lake Mobile CPU. We also know that developer kits have been sent out to software vendors, and the first card, the DG1, was spotted at CES 2020.
Since then, there have been numerous leaks around the internet. There have also been further teases from Raja regarding “the father of all,” regarding what could be their top GPU. It is possible, from one leak, that there may be four upcoming discrete cards in development. This would make sense since competitors AMD and NVIDIA often release three to variants per tier level. It could also be a strategy to simply place one in each level of the PC market. Regardless of rumors, the DG1 seems to be the entry-level card and has the closest lineage to its integrated CPU ancestry.
Well, the cat may have gotten out of the bag with someone spotting what is likely some specifications for the DG1. This latest leak also supports an earlier report on the DG1 featuring 96 execution units. Furthermore, we see this mystery card is labeled with the “Result ID of Intel Gen 12 Desktop Controller”.
From SiSoftware
The DG1 is the least powerful of the upcoming Xe lineup, so these specs seem plausible. So here we have a card with 96 EUs, or 768 cores @ 1.5GHz, 3 GB of VRAM. Some earlier reports from CES 2020 stated the card did not have power connectors, meaning it would need to be powered via PCIe. Specs like this could easily be such a card, whether using 3.0 or 4.0 standards.