Intel Has Officially Entered the Discrete Graphics Card Market!

It’s been known for a very long time now that Intel has plans to enter the gaming consumer discrete graphics card market. However, the information regarding these GPUs has mostly been restricted to rendered images and leaks of varying quality. Following a report via Videocardz, however, it is now official. Intel has released its Intel Iris Xe (DG1) graphics card, and it’s out there available to buy right now! Well, sort of…

Intel Iris Xe GD1 Discrete Graphics Card

Sold as part of a CyberpowerPC pre-built gaming PC (apparently already sold out), sadly, the images do not reveal much of the graphics card’s aesthetics. However, being confirmed in the specifications, this is 100% an Intel-designed discrete GPU solution making it the first time that this has been made commercially available for gamers. – In terms of specifications, the Iris XE isn’t overly impressive, coming with 640 shading units (80 Execution Units), 4GB of LPDDR4X memory, and a bandwidth of 68 GB/s. Given that the system retails for $749.99, however, we’re definitely in entry-level gaming territory here and, under those remits, it should perform nicely enough.

What Do We Think?

Although certainly not coming with much fanfare, this is a categorical confirmation that Intel has now thrown its graphical hat into the ring. With the DG2 expected later this year, with a significantly beefier specification potentially trading blows with some of the best its competitors can offer, it’s going to be great for consumers. If only based on the fact that we’re getting an exceptionally long overdue bit of new competition for AMD and Nvidia! And where there’s competition, there should (hopefully) be some price wars, or at the very least, stock wars.

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!