Intel may be shipping Battlemage GPUs, but it’s not what it seems

By Monica J. White Published November 19, 2024

Intel’s upcoming Battlemage graphics cards might be a lot closer than they seemed to be. A GPU dubbed “BMG B580” appeared in a recent shipping manifest — but it’s not quite what it might seem. On the bright side, this isn’t the only sign that Intel’s best graphics cards are on the immediate horizon.

The shipping manifest, first spotted by josefk972 on X, actually dates back to September 18, but it went unseen up until now. The manifest refers to the BMG B580 — which, in all likelihood, will be the successor to Intel’s budget Arc A580. However, it’s not the GPU itself that’s being shipped; Intel is only shipping the retail boxes for the B580.

First Battlemage B580? pic.twitter.com/uz0aaJlPtA

— X86 is dead&back (@josefk972) November 18, 2024

As this is just a box, it’s hard to figure out anything about the actual graphics card based on this leak. The retail box measures 192mm by 89mm by 381mm, which isn’t huge, but I fully expect the B580 to be a compact, budget-friendly GPU. It’s most likely a dual-slot card with two fans.

The specs are still a mystery, although rumor has it that Intel axed the most high-end Battlemage model it had in the works. As such, we’re probably looking at anywhere from 20 to 32 Xe cores for this one. We’ve recently spotted an unnamed Intel GPU in a benchmark, and that model served up 20 Xe cores, 12GB of VRAM, and a boost clock of up to 2,850MHz. In all likelihood, the B580 won’t feature 12GB of VRAM and such a solid frequency, but we’ll have to see.

It’s been a quiet year for Battlemage, but the number of leaks is truly starting to ramp up. Just yesterday, Japanese website Gazlog reported that Intel is planning a Battlemage system on a chip event for next month. This (admittedly vague) prediction isn’t the first one of its kind. We’ve already heard whispers of a possible launch for Battlemage in time for Black Friday sales. That’s unlikely now, but December is still very much in the cards.

If Intel manages to get Battlemage out the door this year, it’ll beat both Nvidia’s RTX 50-series and AMD’s RDNA 4 to the punch. Both of those lineups are likely to be revealed during CES 2025 in January.