[ad_1]
Intel Corp.
plans to start selling graphics chips for videogamers next month, aiming to get a piece of a lucrative market dominated by competitors
Nvidia Corp.
and
Intel dominates in semiconductors at the computational heart of personal computers, but it has long ceded the market for videogaming graphics chips to Nvidia and AMD. Intel Chief Executive
Pat Gelsinger
on Tuesday signaled the company would re-enter that field, releasing a graphics card for gamers that is slated to be available on Oct. 12.
Intel’s new cards aim to be price-competitive and aren’t expected to challenge high-end cards on performance.
Photo:
Intel Corporation
Intel’s pitch, Mr. Gelsinger said, would be to gamers tired of paying sky-high prices for the fastest, most advanced graphics chips. “They’ve just gotten super expensive, and we don’t think they need to be. We’re about to fix that,” he said at an annual company conference.
Intel’s cards will start at $329, he said. Nvidia last week unveiled a new generation of graphics processors priced at up to $1,599, although Intel’s aren’t expected to challenge those high-end cards on performance, instead aiming to be price-competitive with older-generation chips.
Intel shares fell 0.3% in Tuesday trading. Nvidia’s stock closed up 1.5%. AMD also rose.
The graphics-chip market has grown rapidly in recent years, both due to a surge in videogaming during the pandemic and because those chips have demonstrated to be adept at artificial intelligence calculations that are gaining more widespread adoption.
Nvidia’s sales of videogaming chips were around $2 billion in its latest quarter, while AMD made $1.7 billion in its videogaming segment. The market has cooled in recent months amid economic headwinds and shakiness in consumer spending.
Intel has tried to make graphics processors before, but it has been more than a decade since its last products were under development.
The company has seen its market value slide sharply in recent years. Nvidia is now the largest U.S. chip maker by market value based on its appeal to gamers and the growing AI computation market.
Photos: What Makes Chips So Hard to Produce
Intel began working on graphics processors again several years ago. The first products to emerge from that effort were aimed at large data centers and supercomputers, not consumers. Intel’s high-performance graphics processors are in the Aurora supercomputer at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.
In addition to its new graphics cards, Intel on Tuesday unveiled a new generation of its central processing units for PCs.
Mr. Gelsinger has been trying to revive Intel’s fortunes, including returning the company to make the most cutting edge chips after it lost its manufacturing lead to
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
and South Korea’s
On Tuesday, he said those efforts were on or ahead of schedule.
Write to Asa Fitch at asa.fitch@wsj.com
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the September 28, 2022, print edition as ‘Intel Makes Move In Game Graphics.’
[ad_2]
Source link