Along with new Xeons and vPro platforms, Intel is launching a larger configuration of its Battlemage GPU for the first time, but it's not targeted at gaming. Instead, the new Arc Pro B70 and B65 cards bring options for more compute horsepower and larger memory capacities to users of pro apps and local AI inference workloads on Intel's hardware-software stack.
The first big Battlemage product, the Arc Pro B70, features 32 Xe Cores running at a rated 2800 MHz for a theoretical 22.9 TFLOPS of FP32 compute performance. Intel hooks it up to 32GB of 19 Gbps GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus to enable 608 GB/s of bandwidth.
Both the relatively large VRAM capacity and higher memory bandwidth of this card are important for LLM inference workloads, where being able to fit both models and context in GPU-local memory is critical to achieving the best performance.
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The Arc Pro B70 can be targeted at a wide power envelope of 160W to 290W to support a wide range of cooling designs and system form factors. Intel says this card will start at $949 for its own reference design, and partner cards will be available from brands including ARKN, ASRock, Gunnir, Maxsun, and Sparkle.
The Arc Pro B65 keeps the 32GB of memory and 608 GB/s memory bandwidth of its stablemate, but drops down to just 20 Xe Cores of compute capacity—identical at a high level to the existing Arc Pro B60.
That large gulf in raw compute compared to the B70 is likely meant to appeal to users of professional and creative applications that can benefit from more memory than lesser Arc Pro cards, but not the extra horsepower. It could also appeal to local LLM enthusiasts chasing memory capacity and bandwidth on the cheap.
Intel isn't announcing a price for the B65 today, but it says the card will be available in mid-April.
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Image 1 of 2 (Image credit: Intel) (Image credit: Intel)
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