On April 22nd, it's been reported that the next-generation graphics cards from NVIDIA and AMD may not arrive until the end of this year or even early next year. Intel's second-generation Arc Alchemist graphics card, Battlemage, is expected to debut as early as this autumn, or at the latest, before the year-end shopping season, potentially taking the lead.
Intel has already begun various preparations for it, including patching the Linux kernel.
However, there's bad news this time. The Battlemage, which was originally planned to support DisplayPort 2.1 UHBR 20 mode, has had this feature removed, with the highest support now capped at UHBR 13.5.
The DP 2.1 standard supports three transmission modes, corresponding to different bandwidths. The lowest, UHBR 10, is mandatory with a bandwidth of 10Gbps. UHBR 13.5/20, respectively offering 13.5Gbps and 20Gbps, are optional.
Currently, AMD leads in this aspect. Professional GPUs based on the RDNA4 architecture can support up to UHBR 20, while the RX 7000 series gaming GPUs support UHBR 13.5.
Intel's existing Alchemist Arc A series GPUs default to supporting DP 1.4a. They claim readiness for DP 2.0 at 10Gbps, thus the second generation supports DP 2.1 up to UHBR 20, a notable upgrade.
Of course, for 99.99% of users, there's no difference between UHBR 13.5/20, and to date, only three monitors support UHBR 20.
Just remember, I can go without it, but you can't!
