Why information technology matters: By at present, it's no underground that Intel'south upcoming Arc Alchemist GPUs won't friction match AMD or Nvidia's best cards, and will likely be entirely outclassed past next-generation products coming next year. However, it's also becoming articulate that they'll be almost uncontested in the low-finish market... but according to some other leak, Nvidia is readying a refreshed RTX 2060 to fill that gap earlier Alchemist launches.

An declared leaked slide posted on Baidu once once more reiterates that Arc Alchemist intends to leave the top "Enthusiast+" form of graphics cards — the RTX 3080 and RX 6800 XT, as well equally their higher-end halo-product cousins — well enough alone. Instead, the upper portion of the Alchemist lineup, still referred to here past its DG2 moniker, covers the upper-midrange marketplace segment, while the lower stop "SOC2"-derived GPUs target the clear gap in recent releases below the $300 price point.

It's rather surprising that the Alchemist product line is prepare to exist derived from only ii families of GPU silicon. Past contrast, AMD's Navi lineup has three silicon variants, while Nvidia Ampere is based on four, with the latter leading to the bad-mannered performance gap between the GA104-derived RTX 3060 Ti and the GA106-derived RTX 3060.

Competition seems to be on the mode, too, equally according to insiders cited by VideoCardz, Nvidia is readying the RTX 2060 for another outing. The Turing-based GPU will encounter its vRAM capacity bumped to 12 GB, but other than that it is reportedly the same GPU that launched back in January 2022, rather than a college-powered variant like the Super serial.

Although information technology would lack the glamour of existence the latest-and-greatest generation of graphics cards, a re-released RTX 2060 could help make full out the low-end GPU market if priced appropriately, as in laptops information technology's been shown to outpace the RTX 3050 Ti. However, GDDR6 prices have exploded with the current GPU and console generation, which may cascade cold h2o on the prospects of a GPU with 12 GB of information technology going for cheap.

According to the study, the card could reach marketplace by the tail end of 2022 or January 2022, which would be just in time to pre-empt Alchemist GPUs moving into that same depression-end marketplace. It'due south perhaps a little optimistic that Intel could still consider the $150-199 grade to be "Mainstream+" — at to the lowest degree, not since the GTX 1060 3 GB and RX 570 fashion back when — merely more competition in that price range is e'er welcome.