Intel has finally released its first discrete Xe Graphics card. The card is called Intel DG1 Xe Graphics Card and it is an OEM only graphics card. The graphic card is a major breakthrough for Intel and will be the company’s first step for jumping into the GPU market with full force. ASUS and Colorful models for the DG1 graphics card have also been pictured.
The ASUS variant is a fanless model while the Colorful variant is your typical dual fan, single-slot design that looks and feels like a proper graphics card. The cards are pictured below.
Coming to the specifications of the discrete Intel GPU, the Iris DG1 Xe features 80EUs which is equal to 640 ALUs, 40 Texture units, and probably 20 ROPs if the ratio from Tiger Lake remains the same.
The Xe discrete GPU is actually a cut-down variant featuring 16 fewer EUs than its mobile counterpart meaning this is likely a lower binned variant of the same wafer start. Currently, the base and boost clock speeds for the GPU are not known, but according to rumors, It should be clocked at least 1700 MHz which will mean that it can offer a graphics horsepower of 2.17 TFLOPs.
While that may not be enough for full-HD gaming, the card will serve as a stepping stone into the discrete GPU market for Intel. The TDP is going to be 30 Watts and it will be manufactured on Intel’s 10nm SuperFin technology. Considering its 5W more power-hungry than the mobility card, we can safely assume its clock speed will be higher than 1700 MHz.
The DG1 Xe GPU is based on the Xe-LP architecture and the card will have 4GB of VRAM. Intel released a press release for the card which we have detailed below.
Intel codesigned and partnered with two ecosystem partners, including ASUS, to launch the Intel® Iris® Xe discrete desktop graphics cards (code-named “DG1”) in systems targeted to mainstream users and small- and medium-size businesses. The cards are sold to system integrators who will offer Iris Xe discrete graphics as part of pre-built systems.
Following the launch of Intel® Iris® Xe MAX for notebooks, Intel’s first Xe-based discrete graphics processing unit, Intel and its partners saw the opportunity to better serve the high-volume, value-desktop market with improved graphics, display and media acceleration capabilities.
The new cards offer a compelling upgrade to existing options in the market segment. They feature three display outputs; hardware video decode and encode acceleration, including AV1 decode support; Adaptive Sync; Display HDR support and artificial intelligence capabilities thanks to DP4a deep-learning inference acceleration. The Iris Xe discrete graphics cards come with 80 execution units and 4 gigabytes of video memory.
