We have a very first glimpse of what Intel's Arc Alchemist discrete video cards will look like: over the weekend, a 10-second video surfaced showing what is supposed to be an engineering sample of the product. Evidently Intel has started sending the first prototypes to hardware partners around the world, and you know - as more people know a secret, the chances of it leaking out increase. Incidentally, just a few hours earlier VideoCardz had also published a series of photos of what still looks like the same unit.

Meanwhile, some thoughts on the size: by today's standards, it's... Average, let's say. The board has a heatsink that makes it dual slot, but there is just enough room for two fans. The board offers 3 DisplayPort and 1 HDMI; specifications are unknown, but it was confirmed earlier that the architecture will already support DP 2.0. The PCB shows 8 memory modules: it could be 16 GB (2x8) or 12 (1.5x8). There are two power connectors: a 6-pin and an 8-pin one, which means that the maximum power consumption is limited to a theoretical 225 W. The PCB shows, however, that the board is prepared for two 8-pin connectors.

No full backplate: visible PCB (black, at least, as green is now outdated) and of course specific reinforcement plate for anchoring the heatsink. It seems plausible, however, that the retail model will have a backplate, judging by current market trends. In any case, we can see that the design shown in this latest series of leaks can be defined as a sort of fusion between the two leaked in the past.

According to many observers, the distribution of the board to partners means that we are now close to the debut. No further substantial changes to the board are expected, in other words, what will arrive in shops in a while will be more or less the same. It only remains to be seen how much this 'in a while' will amount to: the most optimistic predict that the board could even be unveiled by the end of this quarter. There should be at least three models, the most prestigious of which should compete more or less directly with NVIDIA's RTX 3070 or RTX 360 Ti for a minimum reference.

Written by: Joshua Wilson