Intel’s Xe-HPG Gaming Graphics will reportedly launch in 2021 – Hardware Ray Tracing Included

Intel has been working on discrete graphics for several years now, and it looks like 2021 will be the year that the company finally delivers GPUs for the gaming market, complete with hardware raytracing support and GDDR6 memory. 

Videocardz has reported that they have gotten a glimpse of Intel’s graphics roadmap, revealing a new graphics cards called the Xe-HPG (Optimised for Gaming). At this time, the specifications for the graphics card remains unknown, though it is due to offer users GDDR6 memory and feature hardware-accelerated raytracing capabilities.  

Intel’s Xe-HPG graphics cards are to be built using an external foundry, which means that Intel’s first gaming graphics card will not be manufactured by Intel’s internal foundries. This makes sense given Intel’s 10nm and 7nm manufacturing issues, though at this time it is unclear who Intel’s foundry partner is. 

Performance-wise, little is known about Intel’s discrete graphics cards. More information about these products will be revealed in time, though it is worth noting that Intel’s Xe-HPG designs may never make it to market. Remember that Intel needs to be competitive with AMD and Nvidia, which means that Intel will need to deliver customers high performance levels, and compelling price points to make any headway into the PC market. 

Intel also has other graphics chips in the pipeline, though these models are designed specifically for the server/enterprise PC markets.