Intel Xe-HPG Engineering Sample Pictured – An RTX 3070 Competitor

Based on the information leaked, Intel’s Xe-HPG engineering samples offer performance levels between Nvidia’s RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 graphics cards, delivering performance levels that are akin to a hypothetical RTX 3070 Ti. That said, Intel’s GPU drivers remain in development, and the exact performance levels of Intel’s planned GPU flagship remain unknown. 

Intel’s Xe-HPG graphics cards will reportedly offer users 512 Execution units that offer users base clock speeds of 2.2GHz. Memory-wise, Xe-HPG allegedly offer users 16GB of GDDR6 memory over a 256-bit memory bus, matching Nvidia’s RTX 3070 in terms of bandwidth while offering two times as much memory capacity. 

Intel’s Xe-HPG graphics card features an 8+6-pin PCIe power configuration in leaked images, suggesting a power target as high as 275 watts. Leaks also suggest that Intel’s Xe-HPG graphics cards will be targeting prosumers, offering users impressive levels of encoding performance. That, and Xe-HPG’s 16GB frame buffer, will make Intel’s discrete GPU offerings incredibly appealing to video editors. 

Xe-HPG’s launch should be in Q4 2021, giving Intel plenty of time to develop strong drivers and an ample GPU supply. Intel is reportedly working on a competitor to Nvidia’s DLSS feature, using the internal name XeSS.