Intel’s new graphics chip is taking on Nvidia and AMD #NewsUnitedStates

Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley joins the Live show to break down Intel’s new graphics chip, competing with the likes of Nvidia and AMD.

Video Transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: Intel is taking aim at rivals AMD and Nvidia with a new line of chips. Yahoo Finance tech editor Dan Howley has more on this. Dan. DAN HOWLEY: That’s right, Brian. Intel has officially launched its new Arc graphics processors, and basically what these are, are exactly what NVIDIA and AMD do. They’re graphics chips that, for now, go into your laptop, and then eventually, they will be releasing full desktop class cards, the big chunky boys that you would put into your desktop if you want to play video games or you’re into content creation. So what they’re launching at first is called the Arc 3. It’s the very, very, very lowest entry level that they offer. And we haven’t really seen any comparisons from Intel to Nvidia or AMD’s own chips. What they did show us, though, is a comparison to the company’s own integrated graphics chips. Now, just really quick explainer. An integrated chip is not a graphics chip. It’s an accelerator that uses a computer’s CPU. So it relies on your CPU and your RAM. That’s why you can’t really play games on it. That’s why it’s just not good for content creation. An actual discrete graphics chip, which is what the Arc is, has its own processing unit, that GPU, as well as its own RAM. So that’s why it’s very important for gaming and for content creation. Now, what Intel is going to do this summer is launch its Arc 5 and Arc 7 for laptops. Those are going to be for actual gaming and heavy gaming applications. And then later on, they will have their own desktop class card. And just, if you’re wondering whether or not this will line up with Nvidia’s big beefy cards or AMD’s big beefy cards, they’re not going to just yet. Intel has said that in the future, they have a new graphics card called Celestial. That’s the current code name. And that will be for the ultra enthusiast level, otherwise, known as the Dan Howley level, of graphics cards for gaming. JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, I wonder if you’re the first and only person who have ever called those big, beefy chips, by the way, or big, beefy cards, when you’re talking about those various cards. I have a question, to take a step back for a moment. Because of course, we’ve seen Intel do this reorientation to try to make itself a fabricator of chips here in the United States. And how does this position them if they’re also, of course, competing against other companies, but then, as we heard from NVIDIA recently, maybe also working with them to make their chips? How does that all– all those dynamics work? DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, I think it’s just going to be kind of the same idea that we see in other tech companies, right? Apple and Samsung directly compete, but Samsung creates the screens for the iPhone, right? They’re one of the largest display makers in the world. They also make the memory chips for the iPhone. So I think that it’s going to be kind of a relationship along those lines, where it’ll be a separation there, where you’ll have Intel perhaps making Nvidia chips, if, as Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, said, they can spool up and get their factory up to snuff for Nvidia’s needs. Then I think it would just be a separation there between the actual fabrication side and then the chip side that Intel would have in designing and making its own graphics card. You would think that they wouldn’t produce them in the same factory. I think, really, what it comes down to between the cards is, you know, the software behind the scenes, as well as their own understanding as far as making the cards themselves when it comes to the transistors and the different types of RAM that they may use, things along those lines. So, you know, I do think that they would be able to still work together. I think there would just be a separation. But it is interesting that they’re talking about helping Nvidia build these cards while simultaneously building their own to directly compete with them. And you’ve got to wonder, does that mean that Intel is going to try to push further into that space when it comes to AI and data center AI supercomputing along those lines with their graphics chips? Because that’s what Nvidia has really been making a lot of money on.