Intel's next-gen Battlemage GPU could take the fight to Nvidia's RTX 4080 after all

pcgamer.com:

Remember that rumour Intel was scaling back on its plans for its next-gen Battlemage graphics architecture we reported last month? At the time we said something about it didn't square up. But now there's new, arguably more substantial, information that implies Intel hasn't reduced its ambitions for Battlemage at all. Intel's next Arc GPU could still be targeting performance up to Nvidia RTX 4080 levels.

Battlemage, of course, is the follow up to the Alchemist GPU architecture in Intel's current Arc GPUs including the A770 and A750. It's generally expected to appear next year. The precise timings aren't clear, but obviously the sooner the better for both gamers and Intel itself.

Anyway, the new data dump as communicated by Tom's Hardware and originally unearthed by Twitter user Harukaze5719 involves the test tools Intel supplies for partners preparing to produce graphics cards based on its upcoming GPUs. To cut a long story short, it's an interposer that's related to the chip package mounting on the graphics card PCB.

And here's the thing. The interposer for the high performance Battlemage GPU is larger than the equivalent for Alchemist. Now, this doesn't say anything directly about the die size of the highest performance Battlemage GPU. But it does strongly imply that it's a pretty decent size.

Moreover, the interposer for the lower performing of the two upcoming Battlemage dies is much smaller. Because the chip package is smaller and so will be the die size of a lower performing GPU.

The larger Battlemage interposer is only slightly bigger than big Alchemists. 2.5 per cent larger, apparently. Intel has also said that Battlemage will be built on TSMC's N4 process, which is effectively the same as Nvidia has used on its