The workstation graphics card market is about to usher in a new round of reshuffle! Intel’s long-dormant independent graphics card business has finally reported significant progress. According to exclusive news from foreign media VideoCardz, Intel has confirmed that it will officially release two professional-grade workstation graphics cards on March 25: Arc Pro B70 and Arc Pro B65. This is the debut of the BMG-G31 large core based on the second-generation Battlemage architecture. The most eye-catching thing is that both new cards come standard with up to 32GB of ECC GDDR6 video memory, which is significantly higher than the previous generation products. It is obviously aimed at the current hot demand for local deployment of generative AI and large language models (LLM). This competition between Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD in the fields of professional graphics and AI computing is entering a fierce stage.
32GB video memory becomes standard: Intel Arc Pro B70/B65 workstation graphics card is scheduled to be released on March 25
According to an exclusive report by VideoCardz, Intel has sent out product launch invitations to the media, confirming that the Arc Pro B70 and B65 will be officially unveiled on March 25, Taiwan time. These two new cards will only be sold on workstation systems, which means that consumer gamers will not be able to get them for the time being. It is worth noting that this is not the first time Intel has exposed the existence of the BMG-G31 large core. As early as early March, technology media Wccftech had discovered traces of Arc Pro B70 in the update log of Microsoft’s open source AI inference framework LLM-Scaler vLLM. Leaked information at the time suggested that this would be the flagship workstation graphics card in the Battlemage series, and now the release date has finally been confirmed.
The most shocking specification of the two new cards is the ECC GDDR6 video memory configuration of up to 32GB. Compared with the 24GB video memory of the previous generation Arc Pro B60, the new card not only increases the capacity by 33%, but also upgrades the bit width from 192-bit to 256-bit, bringing a memory bandwidth of approximately 576GB/s, which is significantly improved compared to the B60’s approximately 456GB/s.
Arc Pro B70: Full health version of BMG-G31 core
The flagship Arc Pro B70 will use the full-blooded BMG-G31 chip, equipped with up to 32 Xe2 cores, corresponding to 4096 FP32 computing units. This is Intel’s most powerful independent graphics core configuration at present, and it is expected that the computing power will significantly exceed existing products.
Arc Pro B65: The streamlined version also has 32GB of video memory
The slightly lower-positioned Arc Pro B65 uses a castrated version of the BMG-G31, equipped with 20 Xe2 cores (2560 FP32 computing units), and the core size is the same as the existing Arc Pro B60. But the most surprising thing is that the B65 has not reduced the graphics memory configuration. It also provides 32GB GDDR6 and 256-bit width, which is very attractive to professional users with limited budget but still need large graphics memory capacity.
Power consumption and heat dissipation design: maximum performance release of 290W
Intel has confirmed the power consumption specifications of two new cards. Arc Pro B70’s board power consumption configuration ranges from 160W to 290W, of which the public version design is 230W, which is at least 90W higher than Arc Pro B60, but still lower than the B60 Dual dual-core version that usually adopts 400W power consumption design. The power consumption of Arc Pro B65 is controlled at 200W, which is the same as the existing B60. This means existing workstation cooling solutions should be seamlessly compatible, lowering the upgrade threshold.
It is worth noting that major AIB partners have received BMG-G31 test samples for verification, and customized versions will be launched in the future. This implies that consumers will not only be able to choose Intel’s limited edition public graphics cards, but will have more choices in cooling and power supply design in the future.
AI computing positioning: locking in LLM local deployment requirements
The combination of 32GB of large video memory and 256-bit bit width, the most significant value for professional users is the leap in AI computing power. Compared with the previous generation of products, the new configuration will significantly improve the processing capabilities of local LLM inference, generative AI workflow, professional rendering and visualization and other scenarios.
Specifically, upgrading from 24GB to 32GB of video memory means a single graphics card can more comfortably handle 70 billion parameter-level 4-bit quantized models, providing more headroom for longer context windows, KV cache growth, and higher batch sizes. For Transformer inference tasks, especially when dealing with larger-scale quantized models, the increase in memory bandwidth is even more practical than the increase in the number of cores.
This product strategy is obviously designed in response to the current explosive growth in AI computing demand. Compared with the NVIDIA RTX series, which is priced at tens of thousands of yuan, the Intel Arc Pro series is expected to provide considerable AI computing performance at a more competitive price.
Changes in consumer graphics card plans: resources are concentrated on the workstation market
The release of Arc Pro B70/B65 also confirms a major shift in Intel’s independent graphics strategy. Previous reports pointed out that Intel has temporarily shelved its development plans for consumer gaming graphics cards based on the G31 core, focusing all resources on its workstation product line. This is exactly the same as what happened to the first generation of Alchemist graphics cards: At that time, Intel also launched the workstation version first, and the consumer version was late. Industry analysts believe that this reflects Intel’s pragmatic strategy in the independent graphics card market: first consolidate the professional market with higher profit margins, and then attack the highly competitive consumer gaming market as appropriate.
Intel has not yet confirmed the specific launch time and recommended selling price of these two graphics cards, but considering its specifications and positioning, the market expects that the price of Arc Pro B70 may fall in the range of US$800-1,200, which is more price competitive than the NVIDIA RTX 4000 SFF series.