Until now for a very short bit during its Technology Tour, Intel featured the Xe2 GPU architecture in F1 24 and mentioned XeSS, Frame Gen, and architectural improvements in Battlemage.
More About the Intel Lunar Lake Xe2 GPU
During the Intel Technology Tour event in Taipei, the company showed its first gaming demo of the Lunar Lake CPUs which pack the Xe2 GPU and run F1 24. This demonstration is an Xbox launch title that is compatible with the XeSS technology as well and provides a fantastic comparison point for Intel’s advancement into the graphics space, with day 1 support for new Intel GPU features in a major AAA title.
The F1 24 demo is built to run on an unannounced Lunar Lake CPU as well as the Xe2 GPU, and it stayed inside the Lunar Lake power budget, too: around 17W. With the ray-traced shadows enabled, the game can run at 60FPS much all the time at 1920×1080 resolution and High settings preset and XeSS Performance modes, showing Intel’s low-power gaming performance progress.
Intel also claimed Lunar Lake chips will offer much-improved efficiency over its predecessors, and based on a 3DMark test from a PCWorld benchmark demo, the Xe2 GPU in Intel Lunar Lake chips is comparable in performance to a GPU from AMD or Qualcomm chips while consuming less total power. Additionally, Intel’s Technology Architecture Performance (TAP) provided insights into Alchemist, Battlemage, and future pixel/frame generation.
Intel is in search of new graphical experiences for this and is looking beyond the drives with small form factors Intel plans to create Xe2 GPUs for both discrete and integrated designs. Acknowledging initial challenges with Alchemist, Intel has made significant compatibility fixes and plans to provide better API support with Xe2.
TAP also introduced a novel approach to pixel generation, suggesting a GenAI approach as a potential alternative to Frame Gen. While this technology may not debut with Xe2 or Battlemage GPUs, future architectures like Celestial or Druid could incorporate it. If the promises about Xe2 GPUs hold true, Intel could offer mainstream gamers solid performance, supported by robust software and drivers, enabling smooth gameplay with the latest titles.
