Big Battlemage has become a hot topic on tech forums as Intel prepares to launch a brand-new discrete graphics card carrying the BMG-G31 codename. Despite a lukewarm, far-from-explosive reception from the gaming community so far, the giant is staying the course and pushing its business forward with a promising product.
Big Battlemage and Arc B770 Specs Come to Light
The existence of the G31 graphics processor was recently confirmed indirectly but credibly when it unexpectedly appeared on Intel's official website. Specifically, the codename is listed as one of the GPUs supported by VTune Profiler, the company's own in-depth performance analysis tool. Reports from well-informed sources suggest the first graphics card to carry the new chip may go by the provisional name Arc B770, although Intel has yet to officially confirm that naming.
The "Big Battlemage" name has in fact been circulating in tech news for more than a year, with a number of key specifications leaking from various sources. According to the aggregated reports, G31 will be a far more powerful successor to its smaller sibling G21, the chip currently powering the Arc B580 and B570. The first notable upgrade is in manufacturing: the new chip is reportedly built by TSMC on an advanced 5nm process and has a considerably larger die than G21.
In the Arc B770, the G31 GPU is expected to have as many as 32 Xe2 cores. That is a big leap in hardware, a 60% increase over the 20 Xe2 cores on the B580 and well beyond the 18 cores on the B570. Rumors also suggest the Arc B770 may ship with up to 16GB of GDDR6 video memory (VRAM) on a 256-bit memory bus, along with the modern PCIe 5.0 x16 interface. Other reported specifications include a memory speed of up to 19 Gbps and memory bandwidth of up to 608 GB/s, promising fast graphics data processing.
Power Consumption and Expected Launch Timing
However, great power usually comes with high energy consumption. An unofficial leak indicates that G31 may draw considerably more power than its predecessor G21. Based on a shipping manifest on NBD, an engineering sample of this upcoming Battlemage card was listed with a thermal design power (TDP) of up to 300W. That is far higher than the 190W rating of the Arc B580 and even exceeds the 225W TDP of the first-generation high-end Arc A770.
So far, only the gamer-oriented version of G31 has surfaced. Industry watchers expect Intel to also announce a Pro variant for professional work, with a massive 32GB of memory. As for the launch schedule, the new GPU is rumored to debut alongside Intel's Panther Lake processors at CES 2026 in January 2026. Even so, we will most likely only see the Arc B770 at that event, while the Pro version may be scheduled for a later date.
