Intel has turned on its first real gaming GPU, the Intel Xe DG2. That may sound like it was brought to life with little fanfare by simply switching on a test rig, but it is much more important than that.

Nevertheless, Intel's Xe DG2 graphics card is rumored to be set to target the Tiger Lake-H gaming laptop PC, regardless of whether it is mounted on or connected to a full-blown desktop PC.

In a recent Q3 earnings call, Bob 'El Sisne' Swan tried to talk about what has been a tough quarter for this large chip manufacturing machine. He is also keen to mention the fact that Intel is no longer all about the processor either, as rivals are planning to launch their new AMD Ryzen 5000 series CPUs and their own next-generation enthusiast-class Radeon RX 6000 graphics cards It's not all about the processor anymore. There are graphics cards, too.

Well, it will have a graphics card.

"Our first discrete GPU, DG1, is shipping now and will be in systems for several OEMs later in Q4," Bob says (via Seeking Alpha). And we're also developing our next generation GPU DG2 for our clients." Based on our Xe high-performance gaming architecture, it will take our discrete graphics capabilities into the enthusiast segment. [Basically, the "power-on" phase in the life of a chip is a critical internal verification step that must be completed before the hardware is sent out for external verification by software developers and system manufacturers.

In other words, this is a critical step in the lifecycle of Intel's first enthusiast graphics card, and therefore a pretty big deal. However, it does not necessarily mean that we will see anything concrete as an actual product by this time next year.

According to rumors posted on "Moore's Law is Dead," the Xe DG2 chip will be manufactured on Intel's outsourced 6nm process and will offer up to 16GB GDDR6, the same as AMD's upcoming RX 6000 series GPUs. Intel itself is believed to be expecting Nvidia RTX 3070-level gaming performance, although some sources say that may be a bit optimistic.

But first, it will feature Intel's Xe DG1 discrete GPU. This is the same graphics silicon found in the top of the line Tiger Lake laptops, with 96 execution units. In other words, it is discrete.

We do not expect this to appear as a desktop graphics card, but more likely in OEM notebooks coming out around the end of the year. We do not know why both a Tiger Lake chip with an integrated Iris Xe GPU and a discrete version are needed. Perhaps it is so that manufacturers can combine cheaper Tiger Lake processors with top-end Iris Xe silicon.

That makes a lot of sense, given that Intel has historically placed the top-of-the-line integrated graphics core at the absolute top of the processor stack. If OEMs can combine this GPU with the Core i3 Tiger Lake, it would still be a tasty, affordable, thin and light machine that would get no small amount of gaming credit.