Leak reveals a cut-down lntel DG2-512 GPU with 448 EUs that is almost as fast as the RTX 3070 or the RX 6700 XT

Up until now, the upcoming DG2 GPUs from Intel also known as Xe-HPG in official slides were supposed to feature 5 SKUs. However, trusted Twitter leaker TUM_APISAK recently revealed that there may actually be six SKUs, with the sixth being a cut-down version of the high-end 512 EU variant. So the final DG2 lineup would include a 512 EU model with a 448 EU cut-down version, a 384 EU model with a 256 EU cut-down version and an 128 EU model with a 96 EU cut-down version. With all the shortages going on this year, it looks like Intel may launch only the two high-end versions later this year, and the rest of the roster some time in Q1 and Q2 2022.

According to APISAK’s latest tweet, the 448 EU SKU is designed to go head to head with the AMD RX 6700 XT and Nvidia RTX 3070. APISAK mentions that the 448 EU model is getting a 1.8 GHz boost for the core clock and is around 8% slower than the AMD GPU or  5% slower than the Nvidia one. This means that the 512 EU model should perform close enough to an RTX 3080, or more likely the newer RTX 3070 Ti. Furthermore, APISAK states that the DG2 128 EU model clocked at max 1.9 GHz should perform around 12% better than the Nvidia GTX 1650. The exact testing suite that determined all these performance metrics is not mentioned, unfortunately.

Now, from previous leaks, we know that the DG2 512 EU model will get 16 GB of GDDR6 VRAM, while the 384 EU model is getting 12 GB, so the 448 EU variant should get at least 12 GB, and this is already above the 8 GB offered by Nvidia’s RTX 3070 / Ti. Despite being produced on the TSMC 6 nm nodes, the 512 EU SKU with the 448 EU variant feature a 396.24 mm² die, which is almost as big as the Nvidia GA104 die measuring 392 mm² produced on 8 nm, and quite a bit bigger than the 7 nm Navi 22 die at 335 mm². Production yields might not be a problem with the bigger TSMC dies considering the maturity of the 7 nm and 6 nm nodes, but actual supplies could be affected depending on how TSMC is handling the shortages. A limited supply can heavily influence the retail pricing, even if Intel tries to set some aggressive MSRPs (sub-$400?) versus similar AMD and Nvidia cards.

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