The user manual issued by the chip giant has allowed us to see the requirements of Intel Arc Alchemist graphics cards, and the truth is that we were surprised, because these requirements are relatively high, so much so that if they are truly exclusive, they will only work on three generations of processors.

According to this information, which, as I told you, is official, the new Intel Arc Alchemist graphics cards will only work on computers based on the following specifications:

• Core Gen10 processors (Comet Lake-S) with 400 series motherboards and Resizable BAR enabled.
• Core Gen11 processors (Rocket Lake-S) with 500 series motherboards and Resizable BAR enabled.
• Core Gen12 processors (Alder Lake-S) with 600 series motherboards and Resizable BAR enabled.

Needless to say, future Raptor Lake-S processors and motherboards with the 700 chipset also enters the list of supported configurationsalthough they have not been included because they have not yet been officially introduced.

The requirement to activate the Resizable BAR technology has an explanation, namely that, according to Intel, it is something necessary for optimal performance in all applications. This raises some questions, as it is not entirely clear whether it will be possible to use Intel Arc Alchemist graphics cards without activating this technology, and if so, what performance we can expect.

But the truth is, I’m quite interested, and I am we look forward to seeing whether such technology is really capable of making such a difference with Intel Arc Alchemist, especially since so far the performance improvements we’ve seen with other graphics solutions, such as the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30, have been very small.

Will Intel Arc Alchemist work with AMD processors?

Yes, although Intel only explicitly mentioned Core Gen10, Core Gen11 and Core Gen11 at the end, it also stated that “Other platforms and motherboards with Variable BAR size or Smart Access Memory activated could also support Intel Arc Alchemist graphics cards ». As many of our readers will know, this means that SAM-compliant CPUs and motherboards should be fully compatible with the new Intel graphics cards.

To all the requirements we have already seen, we must add one more, and that is the one that the motherboard must have one PCIe Gen3 slot running in x16 mode. In this case, it is also unclear whether this means that it will not be possible to run an Intel Arc Alchemist graphics card in a PCIe Gen3 x8 or lower slot, or whether it will work but offer lower performance.

If we use a processor Core Gen10 it may happen that our motherboard does not support Resizable BAR, so we will have to be very careful if we thought of buying an Intel Arc Alchemist graphics card. Intel, on the other hand, has indicated that it will be necessary to take action in this case motherboard firmware update.

For all the questions that remained in the air, we will have to wait for the launch of Intel Arc Alchemist. We still don’t have an exact release date, but the latest information we’ve seen pointed to this summer, so they should theoretically arrive before the end of August.