Is it worth buying an Intel Arc A770?

[Der tüddelige Fußgänger]

Hey all.
My current RX 580 is getting a bit old and think about getting myself a new GPU, now that the prices are quite low, (at least in comparison to the chaos that was 2021) to finally play some games at better settings and buy new games, knowing that my GPU won't explode. (I also play at 1440P, managable for my 580, though it's noticable that I push this poor thing quite a bit when playing newer games)
Though at least for me, it's important to mention that I daily drive Linux and thus, some problems are more likely and some are less likely to occur. I generally run all games in Vulkan due to DXVK translating dx11 games. Meaning that I don't have to worry about the card's terrible dx11 performance. But again, running niche hardware on a niche operating system might also be the cause for quite a few issues.
Also the card has been out for over a year at this point, so I'm sure that the drivers, while not perfect, are at least in a somewhat usable state as of now. (I'm also using rolling release distributions, meaning that I always get the latest and greatest drivers)
Another positive upside would be that it's generally quite comparable to team green's and red's midrange GPUs. Probably even beating AMD when it comes to raytraced games (if I ever play games which support this).
Lastly, as I run a ryzen 3600. It's important to mention that I only have pcie 3. So it's not unlikely that the 7600 would throttle as it just uses 8 lanes. Intel arc has the full 16 lanes which should be enough, even on pcie3 speeds, as it's "just" a midrange GPU. Though I do have resizable bar, I got this functionality from a BIOS update, so I shouldn't miss out on too much performance.

So I want to ask about this forum's opinion on Intel Arc as a daily driver. Is it worth supporting the newcomer, well knowing that I will be an extreme niche usecase (gaming on both Linux and Intel Arc)? Or should I play everything safe and just buy a "boring" RX 7600, knowing that everything should work just fine. And if it doesn't, that the drivers will quickly catch up.

(And before anyone here even tries to recommend me one. No, I won't buy an Nvidia GPU. My Intel and AMD experience has been way too good in order to try out an Nvidia GPU with their ♥♥♥♥♥♥ proprietary drivers. Also ♥♥♥♥ Nvidia as a company.)

[Der tüddelige Fußgänger]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Bad 💀 Motha:

6700 XT are $300 new

At least here in German, Europe.
6700XTs go for ~350€.
The 6700xt looks really compelling. It's already a bit older, should have stable drivers, 12 gigs vram, AV1 decode (I don't care about encoding lol).
I will check out my local PC shop tomorrow and see whether they sell it and at which price.

The Intel arc is just. It looks good. But I know that the drivers are probably still a mess and I would have to wait another year or two until they're on par with what I could already have with a 6700xt. Given that they'll ever reach this level.

Also I just bought a new 750 watts PSU yesterday because my old one was dying, so energy isn't that much of a concern.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Well then juat have to save up a little more I guess. No point wasting your money on junk, which is exactly what those Intel ARC GPUs are

[Der tüddelige Fußgänger]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Bad 💀 Motha:

Well then juat have to save up a little more I guess. No point wasting your money on junk, which is exactly what those Intel ARC GPUs are

I mean. I would have 350€ to spare.
It's just that I'm one of those people who always safe up money, look out for the best deals, even though they'd have enough money.
Unless it's Nintendo, oh boy unless it's Nintendo…

[Jamebonds1]

Intel ARC is not worth your money. It is not DIY friendly.

[_I_]

it might be ok if you need it for hardware accelerated video encoding/decoding, but beyond that its not good for much

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Onboard Intel UHD 6xx series or newer already work very well as video encoder

[C1REX]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Felix:

I agree on the last part.
Nvidia's 80% market share is just insane. Also as I've already stated. I am not interested in buying an Nvidia card. Not just because of their market dominance, but also because I've heard too many bad things about their Linux drivers. It's going to be an AMD or Intel card, that's for sure. (I just hope that AMD's card won't throttle too hard on my pcie 3 board, thanks AMD for limiting it to 8 lanes)

I personally had zero problems with Nvidia’s drivers on Linux but it was a while ago.
As long as your distro supports proprietary drivers then all should be easy to install and should run just fine.
However, I myself also don’t want to use Nvidia and recently bought an AMD GPU and I’m super happy with it.

[Der tüddelige Fußgänger]

Diposting pertama kali oleh C1REX-PL:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Felix:

I agree on the last part.
Nvidia's 80% market share is just insane. Also as I've already stated. I am not interested in buying an Nvidia card. Not just because of their market dominance, but also because I've heard too many bad things about their Linux drivers. It's going to be an AMD or Intel card, that's for sure. (I just hope that AMD's card won't throttle too hard on my pcie 3 board, thanks AMD for limiting it to 8 lanes)

I personally had zero problems with Nvidia’s drivers on Linux but it was a while ago.
As long as your distro supports proprietary drivers then all should be easy to install and should run just fine.
However, I myself also don’t want to use Nvidia and recently bought an AMD GPU and I’m super happy with it.

I personally never had an Nvidia GPU. But my current RX 580 works beautifully. I never had to worry about drivers, I never had any AMD specific issues. And games are more likely to break on Nvidia. I think Forza Horizon 5 is an example which has problems on Linux, when played with Nvidia, yet works mostly fine on AMD.
Also Valve literally pays Mesa driver developers (Mesa are the AMD/Intel GPU drivers), so they're naturally more likely to work.

[Der tüddelige Fußgänger]

Also worth mentioning that I just checked out some local PC retailers. The retailer in my city (just a 20 minute walk away) could offer a 6700xt for 375€. A retailer in the next larger city has one (actually in stock) for 340€.

[AmaiAmai]

I do not know your skill in software, but when it comes to hardware that's new I would not get it unless I am capable of fixing the issues myself. If you are capable and/or don't mind a paperweight should issues arise, then ...

However, the issue is if you mean that you only have enough to buy 1 GPU and it's either that or an alternative that you know will work better, with less issues, and not cost much more -- it makes little sense to experiment.

Intel really missed the mark with their GPUs by not allowing virtualization (AMD did too ) . If they did that, I'm sure a LOT of people would have been more interested in the Arc series and contributed to development and testing in Linux.

I'd really only want one if it were free! Maybe I will get that wish very soon...

[Der tüddelige Fußgänger]

Diposting pertama kali oleh AmaiAmai:

I do not know your skill in software, but when it comes to hardware that's new I would not get it unless I am capable of fixing the issues myself. If you are capable and/or don't mind a paperweight should issues arise, then ...

However, the issue is if you mean that you only have enough to buy 1 GPU and it's either that or an alternative that you know will work better, with less issues, and not cost much more -- it makes little sense to experiment.

Intel really missed the mark with their GPUs by not allowing virtualization (AMD did too ) . If they did that, I'm sure a LOT of people would have been more interested in the Arc series and contributed to development and testing in Linux.

I'd really only want one if it were free! Maybe I will get that wish very soon...

Again, thanks for the tip. But I already stepped down on the thought of getting myself an Intel GPU. The 6700xt is already 2 years old (and as such, has stable drivers) and has more Vram. The 16 gig Intel cards were sadly just a limited run and are now going for really high prices.

[r.linder]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Felix:

Diposting pertama kali oleh AmaiAmai:

I do not know your skill in software, but when it comes to hardware that's new I would not get it unless I am capable of fixing the issues myself. If you are capable and/or don't mind a paperweight should issues arise, then ...

However, the issue is if you mean that you only have enough to buy 1 GPU and it's either that or an alternative that you know will work better, with less issues, and not cost much more -- it makes little sense to experiment.

Intel really missed the mark with their GPUs by not allowing virtualization (AMD did too ) . If they did that, I'm sure a LOT of people would have been more interested in the Arc series and contributed to development and testing in Linux.

I'd really only want one if it were free! Maybe I will get that wish very soon...

Again, thanks for the tip. But I already stepped down on the thought of getting myself an Intel GPU. The 6700xt is already 2 years old (and as such, has stable drivers) and has more Vram. The 16 gig Intel cards were sadly just a limited run and are now going for really high prices.

The drivers for Intel ARC on Linux haven't been very well supported regardless, whereas AMD hardware has the best support so it often performs the best on Linux versus their competition since they put more time and effort into it

Though Intel's cards only being viable for DX12 and Vulkan titles and being rather hit or miss on performance leaves them very inconsistent from game to game, sometimes the A770 will be faster than the 3060 and 6600, other times it'll be slower than both, and that's in Windows, not Linux

Don’t mind the jester awards, I have a superfan that stalks me everywhere because I live inside their brain rent-free.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

If you are going to mainly be using Linux; regardless of what you'll be using it for; but yes especially gaming, then go with AMD GPU for sure.

Intel vs Ryzen CPU won't really matter.