Early thoughts on Intel ARC :: Hardware and Operating Systems

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tyl0413 Jul 21, 2022 @ 7:53pm

Early thoughts on Intel ARC

There's a benchmark on Gamers Nexus already and additional info on LTT, what everyone think about the cards so far?
My thoughts:
The A380 performance is terrible, it barely manages to beat the 1050 TI which cost the same 6 years ago while requiring extra power which a card of this tier shouldn't, many 1050 Tis don't, RX6400 doesn't (tho it's more expensive).
All of the cards are basically built for Vulkan and DX12, so all old games on older APIs will run significantly worse, but it gets better as in the LTT video they said there's 3 categories they sort the games into, 1 is DX12/Vulkan that actually run well on ARC, so I assume they focus on making all the big AAA games run well so the card look nice on benchmarks, 2nd every other DX12/Vulkan game that they don't care about, 3rd is everything on older APIs.
So even for DX12/Vulkan it's not guaranteed you'll have a good experience.
All the cards require Re-bar, if unavailable performance is impacted badly.
A380 uses PCIe 4x8 so basically even worse performance on anything but the newest PCs, if we're unlucky enough they'll make all the other ones 4x8 too just like AMD did with the 6500 which reduced it's performance quite a bit.
If i remember that should be all the negatives aside obviously pricing and availability which gonna be the main deciding factor if they're even worth thinking about.
Only positive I see is AV1 encode IF it actually gonna take off which will take years and might not even happen but if it does the A380 would be useful in a Plex server but all next gen GPUs are likely to support AV1 encode anyways.

So what you end up with is a card with beta drivers, worse performance on most games than it would be otherwise capable of, requires a nearly brand new PC?

It's good there's an extra choice as even if it's gonna be completely trash people will buy it anyways so there's more nvidia and amd cards remaining for everyone else so that's a plus but I'd rather it be actually good and unless in it's current state they will be significantly cheaper while delivering better performance in at least DX12/Vulkan they could be worth it or they fix the DX11- performance, have PCIe 3x16 (or 4x16 since extra bandwidth isn't used anyways so it won't cripple 3 systems performance) and are still priced at least a bit lower than the competition i honestly don't really understand who these products will be for. Surprised to see so much positivity in the comments of these videos, I too wish it was good and put nvidia in check finally so they stop abusing their monopoly to raise prices and downgrade their software but from the limited information available currently it doesn't look too good to me, hopefully by launch the drivers and DX11 performance will be fixed and the higher end models won't suffer from the issues of the A380 while being reasonably priced.

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Showing 1-15 of 40 comments

matt Jul 21, 2022 @ 11:22pm

Well, that's their entry level GPU. The Arc 5 and 7 are coming later. Intel VP's blog post.[community.intel.com] If it hits GTX 1050 or GTX 1650 performance levels, that's probably enough to satisfy someone like Dell or Lenovo.

Crawl Jul 22, 2022 @ 6:03am

When they were talking to LTT they mentioned that their cards would be priced based on the tier 3 performance so it could be a budget option for some that will run their older games but then give them huge gains in new titles. Its hard to say without some real price/performance information. More players in the space is always good for consumers though.

nullable Jul 22, 2022 @ 7:03am

It'll be interesting to see how people adopt it, and what Intel does with it. But if you were expected to be wowed or impressed at any price point, you might have been a little too optimistic.

People like the idea of a 3rd GPU maker, and feel like Intel could/should be able to blow socks off and hair back. But they have a long history of not doing that in the GPU space. My first PC had an Intel 740 AGP card. And it mirrors ARC in a lot of ways. People had high hopes, because it's Intel. But it was pretty mediocre by any metric. But it was a cheap 3D card to put in OEM's, that's it. No one else was biting. I won't be surprised if that happens again.

A&A Jul 22, 2022 @ 7:25am

The performance of A380 is like GTX1050TI but you have 8 RT cores so you will have the minimal for DLSS, but worse than Rx6400. And on paper you should have two times better texture rate than GTX 1050TI

The GPU have a potential to be better, but this means Intel should improve their drivers a lot.

Last edited by A&A; Jul 22, 2022 @ 7:31am

tyl0413 Aug 3, 2022 @ 7:06pm

I'm not gonna be surprised at all if this is true: https://youtu.be/EP9io4bgZnI
With the level of performance we've seen so far It's totally possible it's not the drivers that are crap but rather hardware itself, real shame since would be great to have some more competition in the GPU space but if it's gonna be crap TSMC might as well just make actually good GPUs instead of wasting resources on this, it is what it is.

ZeekAncient Aug 3, 2022 @ 7:18pm

This is Intel's first generation of cards, and the A380 was the entry level. The 5 and 7 tiers should be a lot better. However, Intel has had issues on the driver side of things. They thought they could just integrate their iGPU drivers to their dGPUs and it didn't work.

You have to remember, Nvidia and AMD have had decades of work put in on the software side. Intel right now just needs to get their software issues sorted out and release these cards to the market. It doesn't matter how good they are. The hardware and architecture is there, on paper. No one is expecting them to blow Nvidia or AMD away, but if Intel can offer decent enough performance, and then undercut the competition on price with similar performing cards, this could go a long way. And force the competition, like Nvidia, to lower their prices.

I expect Intel's second and third generation cards to perform a lot better. Well, unless Intel cancels all their GPUs. Which would be too bad.

Last edited by ZeekAncient; Aug 3, 2022 @ 7:19pm

tyl0413 Aug 3, 2022 @ 7:22pm

Of course, I'd love for them to keep trying til they get it right even if it takes time, thing is this is now possibly a sign that Intel themselves has given up already, hopefully it's just a driver issue that they're able to fix up sooner than later because it would be a shame if they blew their chance.

ZeekAncient Aug 3, 2022 @ 7:34pm

Originally posted by tyl0413:
Of course, I'd love for them to keep trying til they get it right even if it takes time, thing is this is now possibly a sign that Intel themselves has given up already, hopefully it's just a driver issue that they're able to fix up sooner than later because it would be a shame if they blew their chance.

I don't know, I think I take back all that I said. Apparently it is not just a driver issue and problem on the hardware side that drivers can't fix. Faulty silicon. With all the money that Intel is reporting that they already lost, I wouldn't be surprised if we never get an Intel GPU after all.

kiwikev Aug 3, 2022 @ 9:24pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjYSeT-T5uk

Viking2121 Aug 3, 2022 @ 10:27pm

I like to have more options than just the 2 out there, I think Intel could be somewhat of a game changer, but right now and probably for a few gens, I just don't see Intel really making any strides for the serious gamers, they just don't have the decades of experience. Be awesome if they made something out of it.

But I would like to see QuickSync on these cards and I wouldn't mind buying a cheaper Intel card if it would mean I could use Intel QuickSync for some of the things I could use it for or even recording/streaming but still able to game on my 6800xt, something like that would interest me.

#10

Schrute_Farms_B&B Aug 4, 2022 @ 1:24am

People love the idea of a 3rd competitor in the game but they dont have much patience when it comes to the final product. Intel Arc is doing well in synthetics which means that there is definitely potential. And keep in mind, that the A380 was never meant to compete with the 6500/6600. Matching 6400 would have already been a great achievement.

Its way too early for a final judgement. There will be a refresh for Alchemist soon (according to Peterson), and I expect theyll get rid of the driver issue. However, the reason its struggling so badly with drivers is because they are using the igpu drivers as a base.

Every form of competition is good competition, even if its only a scratch on the surface.
We are talking about Intel here. This isnt a kickstarter project and it will need some time in the oven.

#11

Cathulhu Aug 4, 2022 @ 1:27am

Honestly, Intel should have been honest upfront and said they simply aren't ready yet to go to the market with their product.

Now they utterly embarrassed themselves and tainted the brand for many years to come.

#12

FeilDOW Aug 4, 2022 @ 1:47am

https://youtu.be/45n5pnEyw9o

Intel knows there GPUs are no good at anything beside DX12 and Vulcan and will be priced accordingly. I hope no one thought these things would be flawless out the gate, but you have to start somewhere.

#13