Let The Games Begin: Colorful Not Launching Intel Iris Xe Graphics Cards
Colorful Technology has released an official statement saying that the media reports about them launching a discrete desktop graphics card with Intel are false. This comes just one day after ASUS and Colorful were announced by Intel as being board partners for the first DG1 add-in-cards.
Mistakes happen, but this one is very unusual. Colorful was mentioned in the original DG1 product listing and the image they used was named that way as well. In fact, the image is accessible under the name “colorful-2-fan-dg1-angle-1-rwd.png.”
Colorful is a graphics card powerhouse in China and has celebrated being NVIDIAs largest partner in China. They have strategic partnerships with AMD, NVIDIA, and INTEL in China, but appear to exclusively make discrete desktop graphics cards for NVIDIA. It seems plausible that Colorful might have broken some of their legal agreements with one of their partners.
The fan shroud design used on what was shown as the Colorful DG1 card appears to be basically the same as what they use on NVIDIA branded cards. The Colorful DG1 4GB card that was on Intel’s website sure looks similar to the one used on the Colorful Battle Axe GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER GDDR6 8G Graphics Card.
Intel has since removed Colorful from their news article, but read the first line really close.
Intel codesigned and partnered with two ecosystem partners, including ASUS, to launch the Intel Iris Xe discrete desktop graphics cards (code-named DG1) in systems targeted to mainstream users and small- and medium-size businesses.
Intel still mentions that they have two partners that they are launching Intel Iris Xe (DG1) discrete desktop graphics cards with. If we see another known graphics card manufacturer there we will know it was a big typo by Intel, but if it is a brand new company then we know it was likely an exclusivity issue. Intel is going to be a disruption in the graphics card market and it looks like their competitors won’t be letting them enter it easily.
It will be interesting to see who the second board partner is!
Update 01/27/2021: Intel has issued an official statement on the situation now:
Intel launched the Intel Iris Xe discrete
desktop graphics card on January 26th with an article on newsroom linking to the product page where a product image was inadvertently attributed to the Colorful brand. The product page was quickly corrected. Intel works closely with Shenzhen Colorful Technology Development Co Ltd and their subsidiaries as an engineering partner for a range of Intel products. We apologize for the confusion this has caused.
We will provide details of the second OEM partner and brand name when they are available.