Intel Xe-HPG DG2 could be the first to support DisplayPort 2.0, rumored specs indicate a 100 W TDP for the chip alone; low-end SKUs to launch first in Q4 2020

It is well known that Intel is working on an Xe-HPG aka DG2 GPU targeted at gamers. Intel DG2 is expected to be available in several SKUs with the flagship variant sporting 512 executing units (EUs). DG2 is expected to take on the likes of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 and the AMD Radeon RX 6800 making it a potentially competitive entrant in the mainstream GPU space. Now, Igor Wallossek has managed to gather additional information pertaining to the DG2 GPU including a board layout draft and some specifications.

According to Igor, Xe-HPG DG2 will be available for both laptop and desktop form factors. Igor shared a (somewhat older) block diagram of a Tiger Lake-H platform featuring DG2 discrete graphics and, interestingly, showed a 12-lane PCIe Gen4 link between the CPU and the GPU along with DisplayPort 2.0 support.

If true, Intel Xe-HPG DG2 will probably the first mainstream GPU to offer support for DisplayPort 2.0. There is no HDMI 2.1 indicated, which is strange. The use of 12 PCIe Gen4 lanes instead of the standard 16 is intriguing, but it is very well likely that the diagram corresponds to lower SKUs of Xe-HPG that do not require the full Gen4 x16 bandwidth.

Speaking of SKUs, we already know that DG2 will be available in at least six variants; Igor has detailed the specifications for five of them with the 512, 384, and 256-EU versions having a TDP of 100 W for the chip alone. If this is indeed true, it may pose a challenge for cooling and power draws in laptops considering that other components such as memory will further add to this value. Going by these numbers, the desktop variants of these cards could probably hit the 200 W+ TDP mark.

Igor also shared a board layout for notebooks with DG2 sporting four or six memory modules. Unlike the previous design that indicated six GDDR6 memory modules, Igor's version shows just two of them near the GPU while the remaining are regular RAM modules near the CPU. This could probably mean that this particular design could belong to a 196 or 128-EU part with 4 GB GDDR6.

Igor feels that Intel may launch Xe-HPG DG2 sometime between weeks 43 and 50 (October and December) this year initially with 128 and 196 EUs, so as to make it available in time for the holidays. The other three high-end SKUs may launch between week 50 and week 10 in 2022 (December 2021 and March 2022).

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