There’s no denying that 2021 has been a tough year for GPUs and for PC enthusiasts as a whole. We were all hoping that the GPU shortage would be over before the end of the year, but as we enter 2022, the situation hasn’t improved. There are plenty of reasons to get excited about graphics cards in 2022, though.
From the entry of a third major competitor to cautiously optimistic signs of increased supply, 2022 is shaping up to be an inflection point. Now that the ball has dropped and our calendars have been reset, here’s what to expect from graphics cards this year.
Intel Arc Alchemist GPU
Perhaps the most exciting new GPUs for 2022 are Intel’s Arc Alchemist graphics cards. Intel makes a lot of GPUs, but Arc Alchemist marks the company’s first time designing a gaming-focused pluggable desktop GPU.
Rumors suggested that Intel would launch the cards at CES, which is pretty much true. Intel announced that Arc Alchemist is in more than 50 “coming soon” desktops and laptops at CES, but the company didn’t provide details on which cards in the lineup, when they’ll arrive or cost. . So far we know of a few laptops – such as the Alienware X17 – with an Arc GPU, but no other details beyond that.
The line-up’s flagship card is rumored to perform around the level of an RTX 3070, but I’m waiting for Intel to share more. Intel has already shared some information about its XeSS scaling feature that will be included with these graphics cards. It works similar to Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), and Intel has announced that hitman 3, The Riftbreaker, and Death Stranding: Director’s Cut will support the feature at launch.
The GPU market has been shrouded in AMD and Nvidia rivalry for far too long, so I can’t wait to see what Intel can do with Arc Alchemist. XeSS looks pretty disruptive, and as long as the cards work as rumors suggest, we’ll have a third contender in the ring. That said, we’re already within Intel’s announced launch window for Arc Alchemist, and we still know very little about the cards.
New mobile GPUs from AMD and Nvidia
Nvidia recently launched a 12GB variant of the RTX 2060 Super, and at CES, Nvidia and AMD came up with new desktop announcements. AMD brought the RX 6500 XT to $199, and Nvidia brought the RTX 3050 and RTX 3090 Ti to $249. Nvidia also quietly launched a 12GB variant of the RTX 3080, which was absent from its CES keynote.
That’s it for desktop announcements right now. For the first half of the year, Nvidia and AMD are focusing on mobile graphics. AMD showcased eight new mobile GPU designs at CES, including the new RX 6000S cards. These cards go against Nvidia’s Max-Q offerings, focusing on performance per watt instead of raw performance.
Nvidia only introduced two new mobile GPUs, but they’re good. The mobile RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti will eventually replace non-Ti models in laptops, and they should offer a huge boost in performance. Nvidia claims the mobile RTX 3080 Ti is more powerful than a desktop Titan RTX, which is really impressive.
I don’t think we’ll see any other mobile GPUs from Nvidia or AMD, at least not current generations. We might see special editions, but AMD and Nvidia have been piling up mobile lineups after CES.
A rollercoaster of prizes
I would normally expect GPU prices to drop as generations begin to show their age. But the GPU market isn’t normal right now, and I can’t tell you where GPU prices will go. Prices fell towards the middle of 2021, showing encouraging signs that the GPU shortage is finally slowing down. Now that we are at the start of 2022, prices are on the rise again.
Component costs are on the rise and graphics cards are still subject to a 25% tariff. Nvidia and other companies have requested an exclusion from these tariffs from the US government, but this exclusion has not been granted at the time of publication. It is also rumored that AMD could apply a 10% price increase to its RX 6000 graphics cards.
It goes without saying: GPU pricing is a mess, and it’s likely to remain a mess for most of 2022. I suspect we’ll see a drop in prices early in the year, an increase towards the summer, and a another drop of the fall (hopefully one that continues to fall). These are only speculations, however. There’s no way to predict where prices are going given how the GPU market has changed for over a year.
Prices will fall at some point, but they may not reach the same levels as before. The coronavirus pandemic has massively increased demand for PCs and graphics cards, and that demand hasn’t gone away, even as many people return to the office. While there are signs of sub-$200 GPUs from AMD and Intel in the future, we don’t have those options. Graphics cards may never be as cheap as they used to be.
Increase in supply
As with pricing, I don’t have a GPU crystal ball that shows where the market is heading. However, there are signs that supply will increase throughout 2022. Nvidia recently stated that it expects the GPU shortage to end around the middle of 2022. Intel CEO said something similar, stating that the chip shortage will improve throughout 2022, hopefully creating stability. supply chain by 2023.
This does not necessarily mean a price drop. Supply and demand are important, but component costs and pricing could still make graphics cards more expensive than they need to be. Looking ahead to next year, I think you’ll be able to find graphics cards more easily at online retailers, but their prices will still be high.
I already see signs of it. Although graphics cards are hard to come by, major retailers have cards in stock right now. These are mostly low-end options – the Radeon RX 6900 XT, which is an excellent graphics card, is probably in stock due to its price – but there are cards available. This situation should improve next year.
New generations of AMD and Nvidia
Although we won’t hear about it for months, AMD and Nvidia have next-gen graphics cards in the works. For Nvidia, that’s the RTX 40 series. A fall 2022 launch would meet Nvidia’s usual release cadence, and several leaks have pointed to a release around that time.
Rumors suggest that Nvidia is dropping Samsung as the manufacturer of choice for these cards, instead developing them on chipmaker TSMC’s N5 process. The smaller process indicates a massive performance boost, although leaks say the extra performance comes at the cost of increased power consumption.
We know a lot less about AMD’s RX 7000 graphics cards. Originally it was rumored that AMD would launch these cards in late 2021, but it looks like the launch date has slipped to 2022. We may see them earlier than the RTX 40 series cards, but I I still expect AMD to wait until at least the middle of the year.
These cards would also use the N5 node, which could offer up to 2.5 times more performance than AMD’s current offerings. The RX 6000 cards have reached performance parity with Nvidia, so I’m looking forward to what AMD has in store for its next-gen cards.
A focus on scaling and image quality
In 2022, I expect the conversation about upscaling and image quality to heat up. In 2019, Nvidia emphasized real-time ray tracing. Now that modern consoles and GPUs support ray tracing, that’s old news. In 2022 you will see Nvidia and AMD focusing on performance.
We already have the two main scaling features: Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR). These two technologies work differently and produce different results. But they are both scaling tools to improve your frame rate while maintaining as much image quality as possible.
We have not heard the end of these technologies. I expect to see a new version of FSR that works similar to DLSS. AMD should wait to release the RX 7000 GPUs as current cards lack the necessary hardware. Assuming we get RX 7000 cards next year, I wouldn’t be surprised to see FSR 2.0 alongside them.
I’m not sure we’ll see a new version of DLSS next year. Nvidia quietly released DLSS 2.3 not too long ago, and it looks like these iterative updates will live up to next year. Nvidia has a dominant lead with DLSS based on our testing, and I imagine Nvidia will ride that wave for as long as possible.
Intel XeSS could, however, throw a wrench in those cogs. Intel plans to release two versions of XeSS, one that works specifically with Intel graphics cards and another that works on all GPUs. The biggest weakness of DLSS is that it only works on newer Nvidia graphics cards. XeSS works on everything, so we might see a bigger response from Nvidia to counter XeSS.
I anticipate that Intel, Nvidia, and AMD will go back and forth on the image quality and performance of their upscaling features, whichever is most beneficial to them at the time. Both are important, but I guess we’ll hear more about one being more important than the other throughout 2022.
