This new Intel gaming GPU benchmark just leaked, and the clock speed is huge

A new G21 variant of the upcoming Intel Arc Battlemage GPU range leaks in Geekbench, showing 160 Xe2 compute units and a high clock speed.

The tail end of 2024 and the start of 2025 are set to see a flurry of gaming GPU activity, if all the rumors are true, with AMD, Intel, and Nvidia all reportedly gearing up for new graphics card launches. The latest leak to hint at what to expect concerns the Battlemage Intel GPU range, with a new graphics card apparently shown as running at a huge clock speed of 2,850MHz. That would make it the fastest-clocked GPU of any modern card.

However, the best graphics cards don’t always need to run at the fastest clock speeds to deliver peak performance. Plus, we are yet to see what sort of clock speed AMD and Nvidia’s next-gen GPUs will boast, so it’s too early to yet tell if this new Intel GPU will come to rule the roost.

This leak comes via that oh-so-regular source of tech spec leaks, Geekbench (as spotted by Wccftech). Because the app collates benchmark results from users, new hardware that is being tested regularly appears on the benchmark’s website. The new leak shows a benchmark test having been run on a machine equipped with an MSI Z790A motherboard, an Intel Core i5 13600K, and a mystery Intel GPU.

The listing shows the benchmark was run on September 25 and that the GPU uses “Intel Xe Graphics RI” and houses 160 compute units. It also shows the GPU is equipped with 11.6GB (effectively 12GB) of VRAM and runs at a speedy 2,850MHz. For comparison, the RTX 4090 has a boost clock speed (so not its regular clock speed) of 2,520MHz and even lower-tier cards (that often have their clock speed cranked up) can’t beat it, with the likes of the AMD RX 7600 boasting a 2,755MHz boost clock.

With overclocking, these sorts of clock speeds have been surpassed before, but for a stock clock speed (assuming that’s what is shown in this benchmark) this would make for a very fast GPU clock.

Meanwhile, the 160 compute units tallied with previous Intel Battlemage leaks, which showed there could be two variants of the new GPU architecture, with one GPU housing 192 compute units and one housing 160. These compute units are called Vector Engines in Intel’s Xe2 architecture, with eight Vector Engines housed in each Xe2 core. As such, we can surmise that this mystery GPU has 20 Xe2 cores.

For comparison, the Intel Arc A770 has 32 Xe Cores with 512 Vector Engines, so these new GPUs aren’t looking overly powerful as yet, even when we consider that the new Xe2 architecture is potentially more efficient and powerful per core.

The actual Geekbench score tallies with this analysis, as its OpenCL score of 97,943 isn’t faster than the current Intel Arc A770, which registers around 100,000 points depending on the test run. If Intel’s intention is to release this mystery new GPU at a bargain price, and with a power-sipping design, though, it could prove an interesting budget option.

For now, though, you can find our current top budget graphics card option in the shape of the AMD Radeon RX 7600. It comfortably undercuts the price of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 while outpacing it in non-ray-traced games.