Cold as ice: Intel sets its sights on AMD and NVIDIA with new Xe GPU details, official renders and a 2020 launch

Intel's Chinese division has laid bare a slew of details for the company's upcoming Xe series of dedicated GPUs. Taking to Weibo, Intel China has stated that the first GPUs will arrive in 2020 and will be built on a 10 nm FinFET process. The company will then move to a 7 nm process in 2021. These second-generation GPUs will support hardware raytracing.

Previously, we reported that hardware raytracing capable Xe GPUs are intended for data centres, which Intel China has confirmed. However, the Xe architecture will be used for consumer and commercial product lines, meaning that Intel is gunning for a slice of the desktop PC GPU market that AMD and NVIDIA currently dominate.

Intel China has released an official render of what looks like a desktop GPU too, finished in a metal shroud with ice-blue accents. The render shows that Intel is toying with the idea of a triple cooler, along with a metal backplate for additional heat dissipation. The GPU has three DisplayPorts too and one HDMI port, although we doubt that the former will conform to the newly announced 2.0 standard.

Finally, the render shows the card as having dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Intel has placed these on the right-hand side of the board rather than the top as with its contemporaries. The shroud even looks to have RGB lighting integrated. Excited? We are.