This rumored new Intel gaming GPU could take on the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070

It looks as though we haven't yet seen the limits of the latest Intel Battlemage architecture, as more and more leaks are pointing to the launch of a new Intel GPU that's even faster than the Arc B580. Hints about the new GPU, which is rumored to be called the Intel Arc B770, have started appearing in a couple of places over the last few weeks, leading to speculation that its launch is coming in 2025.

If the rumors are true, it's hoped this new Intel GPU could pick up from where the Intel Arc A770 left off, as while that GPU suffered from a bunch of compatibility issues when it launched, it was also surprisingly powerful in our game benchmarks. If Intel does indeed have a faster graphics card in the wings, and it can get the price right, it's likely it could take on the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti, and perhaps even the RTX 5070 if it can have as much memory as its predecessor.

For a start, a new Intel GPU has appeared on the PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) website, where new PCIe devices are registered. What's most interesting about the GPU in this listing, which has a cryptic product name of 99CMLN and is listed as an Intel Arc B-Series Graphics Processor, is that it has a 16x PCIe 5.0 interface, whereas all of Intel's other Battlemage GPUs only use the 8x PCIe 5.0 interface, pointing to a GPU with more power under the hood.

What's more, as spotted by GPU tech site Videocardz, the latest GPU drivers for Mesa, an open-source implementation of OpenGL and Vulkan that runs on Linux, lists four new Intel GPUs. In the previous Mesa driver, these GPUs had a generic "Intel(R) Graphics" name, but the details have now been fleshed out in the new driver, which states that they use the "BMG 31" chipset. BMG stands for Battlemage here, and we've previously seen the Battlemage-G31 name in GPU shipments.

If this is indeed the Intel Arc B770, then it's likely to go up against the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti and AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT. If it's anything like the Arc A770, then it's also likely to come equipped with 16GB of VRAM, which means it could even challenge the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 in some games that saturate the 5070's 12GB of memory. When I benchmarked the Arc A770 16GB, I found that its extra VRAM enabled it to run Doom Eternal at 189fps with ray tracing enabled, while the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB could only average 57fps, for example.

Intel has even given us an Arc B770 teaser recently, replying to several X (formerly Twitter) users asking about the GPU, and telling them to "stay tuned!" with an eyes emoji. If Intel is indeed planning to launch the Arc B770 this year, let's hope there's at least some decent stock of it, and that Intel gets the price right.

In the meantime, check out our guide to the best graphics card if you want to buy a new GPU now, and check out my AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT review to see why it's our current budget card of choice.

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