Credit: Fergus Halliday
Although a full-blown reveal eluded us, Intel did give gamers a sneak peek of their first Xe dedicated graphics hardware at this year's CES.
No proper tech press conference would be complete without the promise of one more thing and Intel's CES 2020 presser delivered just that. To close out the evening, Intel Vice President of Architecture for Graphics and Software Lisa Pearce provided a small but meaningful update on the company's efforts to eke out a corner of the dedicated graphics market for itself.
Pearce noted that the Intel's Tiger Lake CPUs will feature integrated graphics built on the same Xe architecture that's set to power the company's first generation of discrete GPUs. She also left attendees of the press conference with a small taste of what Intel's in-development graphical hardware can deliver, showing off live footage of an Intel-powered machine equipped with the company's first discrete graphics offering: code-named "DG1."
The demo itself was short and sweet. About thirty seconds of gameplay footage in total. The Intel-based machine ran Destiny 2 at a fairly smooth clip. At this point, Destiny 2 is a few years old. Still, most of Intel's existing integrated graphics struggle to run this particular first-person looter so it is a little impressive to see it running so well here.
Intel closed out their #CES2020 press conference with a sneak peek of their DG1 dedicated graphics tech pic.twitter.com/RegD19FmMq
— Fergus Halliday (@Cvamped) January 7, 2020
We'll have to reserve final judgement for a later date but, taken as a capstone on the company's CES showcase, Intel's Xe demo made for exciting glimpse of the shape of things to come.
Disclosure - our coverage of CES 2020 was sponsored by Intel and Dell, who covered the cost of our flights to the US and our accommodation for the duration of our stay in Las Vegas.
