The dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell-on-earth yarn claiming that the firm’s next-gen desktop chips will deploy both Xe3 and Xe4 graphics cores, each with their jobs.

Typically, Intel prefers a single integrated graphics architecture. Still, this time around, it’s incorporating Xe3 (aka Celestial) to handle the grunt work on the graphics side. At the same time, Xe4 (codenamed Druid) is assigned display and media tasks, such as outputting video and handling encode/decode operations.

The thinking seems to be that Xe3 will carry the graphical muscle, leaving Xe4 to be the streamlined, efficient sidekick that keeps the whole thing power friendly. That could be handy for budget builds, where fewer Xe3 cores could be paired with the low-draw Xe4 to maintain performance and thermals at a similar level.

This hybrid setup is slated to arrive with Nova Lake-S sometime in 2026, assuming Chipzilla doesn’t get distracted or delayed. Panther Lake for mobile, due earlier, will be the first chip to get Xe3 all on its own.

By then, Intel will still be milking Arrow Lake Refresh and the P-core-only Bartlett Lake-S chips, which are essentially Raptor Lake Refresh with a different badge. Nova Lake-S will be compatible with the LGA 1954 socket, which appears to share the same footprint as the current LGA 1700 and 1851.

While you might see Xe4 running media chores on Nova Lake-S sooner, standalone Xe4 Druid GPUs won’t hit shelves until at least 2027, according to recent whispers. Still, the hardware teams are already knee-deep in making them happen.

What’s notable is that this is the first sign Chipzilla is pushing Xe4 into actual silicon this early, suggesting the architecture isn’t just marketing fodder. For once, Intel might be delivering on a GPU roadmap without endless backpedalling.