Early thoughts on Intel ARC

[tyl0413]

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.

[Lord Flashheart]

As expected, drivers are a disaster.
They will improve over time I expect.

[mtono]

i can play 1000s of games with the entry level card by intel. the serious thing is: SAM. (gpu ram and cpu ram working together). this is a must, for the intel arc series. unfortunetly i cannot effort this technique, caused by money lack. i say: no SAM, no intel gfx. and: the intel software problems? just dont care...this will end, because everyone is (beta-) testing until it works. the same as it ever was. maybe til christmas i own an intel 3d gfx board, making history again and again and again.

addictive. :-D

my2ct

[plat]

Since it's a newcomer, I would carefully watch the early consumer reviews on trusted sites only. Just because it's Intel absolutely doesn't mean it's an instant and successful buy.

Read somewhere that its driver package for WDDM alone was over 1 GB. Intel should refine that also.

[nullable]

My biggest concern is Intel's first generation will flop and they'll abandon it like they did with the Intel 740. There's potential there, and they do have decades of experience making graphics solutions in the IGP's. Beefing that up, adding features, in a dedicated card doesn't seem that big of a stretch.

[Bob the Boomer]

引用自 Snakub Plissken：

My biggest concern is Intel's first generation will flop and they'll abandon it like they did with the Intel 740. There's potential there, and they do have decades of experience making graphics solutions in the IGP's. Beefing that up, adding features, in a dedicated card doesn't seem that big of a stretch.

I hope they stick at it and get it correct, not just hardware side but software also

[mtono]

引用自 plat：

Read somewhere that its driver package for WDDM alone was over 1 GB. Intel should refine that also.

hi,
nvidia is also close to 1gb driver package size. i dont see a problem. else: power consumption is good with the arc intel gfx. isnt it? arc380 can be a buy that makes sense for maybe old school counterstrike...retro gaming...at full gfx. me myself i want an intel board, but i do not have SAM as i mentioned before.
my2ct

[plat]

The last thing I want to do is argue but the latest NV driver version516.59 for Windows 11 is about 785 MB. The Intel display driver for Windows 10 and 11 that I was referring to was over 1.1 GB.

[nullable]

引用自 burrfoottopknot：

引用自 Snakub Plissken：

My biggest concern is Intel's first generation will flop and they'll abandon it like they did with the Intel 740. There's potential there, and they do have decades of experience making graphics solutions in the IGP's. Beefing that up, adding features, in a dedicated card doesn't seem that big of a stretch.

I hope they stick at it and get it correct, not just hardware side but software also

Well they've been writing drivers for their IGP's for a pretty long time too. I think the overall skillset is there. It's just a combination of putting it altogether before bad press annihilates them. The problem is Intel seems to have some screwy marketing strategies that may do as much as anything to sabotage themselves. Like handing out hardware/drivers to reviewers that aren't ready yet.

But I guess it depends on whether or not Intel is seriously going to compete with AMD/Nvidia in the self-build or enthusiast market or just look to flood OEM's with mediocrity. Because let's be honest, if Intel sells 10 million ARC GPU's to OEM's for prebuilts they don't really care if we hate them. And let's also not forget by overall market share Intel has more graphics processors in PC's than AMD or Nivida.

This might just be evidence that "our" segment of the market doesn't really matter.

[mtono]

where is the problem? different machine, different code. and 750 mb is close to 1,1...in my opinion, though i get what you want; dont i?

[nullable]

I'd attribute it to armchair opinions. Like whenever someone has ideas how much RAM a web browser ought to use, or how large a game ought to be. They've never worked on a browser, or a game, or graphics drivers but somehow they know better...

[Agent]

I do wonder if Apple will be able to improve their GPU's further. Having more competition from Apple in the gaming scene would be interesting to see.

[plat]

I always thought the NV driver was bloated as it is. Some of us don't use the Control Panel for eg.

[ZeekAncient]

Apparently, however, the problem isn't just drivers. And I kind of suspected it wasn't. I think they could have ironed most of their driver/software problems by now. Though, there is a Gamer's Nexus video that shows just how bad the driver situation is. So, Intel clearly has some work to do.

The rumor is though that there is something wrong with the actual hardware, the silicon. Problems that better drivers just can't fix. That is why we haven't seen them release Alchemist yet, and Battlemage might have the same problem with it's silicon as well.

Considering all the money Intel has already spent, and lost, on this dGPU endeavor, it is no wonder the big wigs at the top might just nix the whole thing, and jump out of the dGPU business before they are even in it.

I would love to see Intel release their ARC GPUs, and be a third player in the game. Even if they would not contend at the top end, or I would not even consider buying one. If Intel could release entry level, or even mid-tier GPUs, that have decent enough performance, and then turn around and undercut Nvidia and AMD's similar performing GPUs, that could go a long way in normalizing prices, and making sure that Nvidia, or AMD, don't go nuts in the pricing of next gen GPUs.

Maybe Intel should stick to improving their CPUs though. I have been with Intel since 2013, well if you don't count my 486 and Pentiums days in the 90s, and haven't had an AMD CPU since my Phenom II 1100T. Also had a Phenom II 945 and Athlon II 640, and AMD CPUs in the early 2000s. But I never jumped on the Ryzen bandwagon. But seeing early leaks for Zen4 and the Ryzen 7000s series. It is looking very promising that I might just jump on that bandwagon. OIfficial DDR5 6400 and support for PCI-e 5.0 SSDs, while Raptor Lake will only officially support DDR5 5800 and Z790 boards might not all have support for PCI-e 5.0 M.2. I don't know. Intel might have some work to do because the lead they took back with Alder Lake might be short lived, and I might be jumping ship. Maybe I will wait for Meteor Lake, but Zen 4 looks tasty.

[Der tüddelige Fußgänger]

I mean,
well
ehm

My rx 580 is fine.
I don't play very many big new AAA games which require an ultra fast gpu. And since I'm not using Windows, this thing is probably getting gpu drivers for the next 10 years. The drivers are absolutely rock solid, never crashes on me. I can get stable frame rates in all the games i want to play at more than acceptable settings.
Unless a very good alternatives comes out which is priced similarly to my 580 (about 200 european bucks), i think I'm just fine.


But the cards themself;
i mean they look fine. From what I've seen at linus tech tips where they've got an early hands on with their flagship gpu, the directX 12 and Vulkan performance seems comparable, if not every so slightly faster than the rtx 3060.
HOWEVER the directX <12 and OpenGL drivers seem very slow and unoptimized.
Luckily this is merely a driver issue, so this can be fixed over time without having to buy new hardware.

[nullable]

引用自 Bezos：

I do wonder if Apple will be able to improve their GPU's further. Having more competition from Apple in the gaming scene would be interesting to see.

Nothing is impossible, but I've never seen anything that suggests PC games on Mac is a priority for Apple. And even during peak Mac gaming, it seemed to be in a negative spiral of not enough Mac gamers, and Mac hardware not really being focused on gaming. And the cost of upgrades or gaming capable hardware being available on Apple being pretty cost prohibitive.

Mac gamers are always holding out hope that they're an important part of gaming and I've got nothing against it. But I've been hearing about it for twenty years and it's always been hit or miss at best from my perspective. And in the midst of migration to ARM, and what apple did to 32bit support... and how that's affected games, not to mention the end of OpenGL support, I'm not sure where Mac gamer optimism comes from, especially in the short term of the next few years.

But to be fair I've never owned a Mac. The wife did when we were dating and trying to update it for gaming in 2011 was an exercise in expensive futility. So I have some biases and dated understanding of the Mac perspective. maybe it's not that bad. But it doesn't seem comparable to what I've come to expect being a PC gamer.