Today, in a presentation focused primarily on HPC and servers, Intel made a sneak peek at its upcoming gaming graphics card, the DG2. According to the presentation slides (PDF alert), the DG2 is now already shipping samples to Intel partners, which is a good sign that Intel's venture into discrete pixel pushers is coming.

Intel DG2 is based on the Intel Xe architecture, which is already found in Tiger Lake chips and low-power DG1 chips. However, Intel's appetite for discrete gaming has led to the long-awaited arrival of the DG2, which uses the gaming-specific Intel Xe-HPG architecture.

It looks like it will happen at the right time. Intel has promised to announce an Xe discrete card by the end of this year, and the announcement of the DG2 sampling suggests that it is close to becoming a reality.

Sampling means that early versions of Intel's reference DG2 GPUs will be in the hands of Intel's partners. Not only does this mean that distribution is well underway, but it also means that Intel's drivers are in a fairly decent state that can give partners some indication of actual Xe DG2 performance.

And this tells us that Intel's gaming-focused graphics cards will actually hit store shelves soon to help with the ongoing GPU shortage woes... If there is any chance of Intel becoming a true third way to compete with Nvidia and AMD need to launch DG2 before GeForce and Radeon cards are in plentiful supply again.