A not-so-advertised ability will be the biggest advance in the new Arc series

Memory management will also be much more favorable compared to the current generation.

Intel is already very close to the launch of the new Arc series, so the first B-series Arc model will be available within a few weeks. Specifically, the B580, but this is now a matter of details. What is really important is that the Battlemage architecture gets a new command engine, and the main advantage of this is the hardware implementation of the ExecuteIndirect method of the DirectX 12 API.

In theory, ExecuteIndirect itself allows the given application to generate and run a specified number of drawing commands without processor intervention. In this case, it is only in theory, because Intel’s graphics controllers until now were not capable of this, the function was partially emulated through the processor, so the systems failed to use the method.

Since the Battlemage architecture finally natively implements hardware support for ExecuteIndirect, from now on the new Arc generation will also be able to generate and then run a specific number of drawing commands without the intervention of the processor. Overall, the change reduces the additional load on Intel’s DirectX 12 driver, which is very important because current Arc VGAs run into processor limits sooner than competing solutions, but this disadvantage is eliminated with the new command engine.

In addition to the above, another important innovation of the new design is that Battlemage will be better able to cope with memory copies working with small amounts of data. With this, the architecture itself will be better suited to the typical workload of dedicated GPUs, so that, for example, the activation of Resizable BAR will not be such a critical factor. Regardless, this ability still offers considerable benefits, so it’s not worth turning it off anyway.

With the mentioned two innovations, Intel corrects the serious shortcomings of the original Arc designs, so they will be able to compete more effectively with the competition. Among other things, the performance of the B-series Arc models will become more stable and predictable, the speed will not fluctuate as much from game to game.