> 224 GB/s of effective bandwidth
Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations
51–60 of 274 posts
Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
DisplayPort is the superior option for monitors. High end gaming monitors will have DisplayPort inputs. Converting from DisplayPort to HDMI is trivial with a cheap adapter if necessary. HDMI is mostly used on TVs and older monitors now.
HDMI is still valuable for those of us who use KVMs. Cheap Display port KVMs don't have EDID emulation and expensive Display Port KVMs just don't work (in my experience).
The only well-reviewed DisplayPort KVMs I'm aware of are from Level1Techs: https://www.store.level1techs.com/products/kvm
Not cheap though. And also not 100% caveat-free.
Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations
#53It’s interesting that it uses 4 Display Ports and not a single HDMI. Is HDMI seen as a “gaming” feature, or is DP seen as a “workstation” interface? Ultimately HDMI is a brand that commands higher royalties than DP, so I suspect this decision was largely chosen to minimize costs. I wonder what percentage of the target audience has HDMI only displays.
4x Mini DP is common for low profile workstation cards, see the Quadro P1000, T1000, Radeon Pro WX 4100, etc.
Yeah, I recall even old Quadro cards in early Core era hardware often had quad mini DisplayPort.
Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations
#54It’s interesting that it uses 4 Display Ports and not a single HDMI. Is HDMI seen as a “gaming” feature, or is DP seen as a “workstation” interface? Ultimately HDMI is a brand that commands higher royalties than DP, so I suspect this decision was largely chosen to minimize costs. I wonder what percentage of the target audience has HDMI only displays.
HDMI requires paying license fees. DP is an open standard.
I'm not 100% sure but last time I looked it wasn't openly available anymore - it may still royalty free but when I tried to download the specification the site said you had to be a member of VESA now to download the standard (it is still possible to find earlier versions openly).
Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations
#55It’s interesting that it uses 4 Display Ports and not a single HDMI. Is HDMI seen as a “gaming” feature, or is DP seen as a “workstation” interface? Ultimately HDMI is a brand that commands higher royalties than DP, so I suspect this decision was largely chosen to minimize costs. I wonder what percentage of the target audience has HDMI only displays.
There are inexpensive ($10ish) converters that do DP > HDMI, but the inverse is much more expensive ($50-100)
As long as the port supports it passively (called "DP++ Dual Mode"), if you have a DP-only port then you need an active converter which are the same as the latter pricing you mentioned.
Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
AMD has also often said that they can't compete with Nvidia at the high end, and as the other commenter said: market segments exist. Not everyone needs a 5090. If anything, people are starved for options in the budget/mid-range market, which is where Intel could pick up a solid chunk of market share.
Regardless of what they say, they CAN compete in training and inference, there is literally no alternative to W7900 at the moment. That's 4080 performance with 48Gb VRAM for half of what similar CUDA devices would costs.
How good is it though compared to 5090 with 32GB?
5090 has double the memory bandwidth, which is very important for inference.
In many cases where 32GB won't be enough, 48 wouldn't be enough either.
Oh and the 5090 is cheaper.
Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations
#57It’s interesting that it uses 4 Display Ports and not a single HDMI. Is HDMI seen as a “gaming” feature, or is DP seen as a “workstation” interface? Ultimately HDMI is a brand that commands higher royalties than DP, so I suspect this decision was largely chosen to minimize costs. I wonder what percentage of the target audience has HDMI only displays.
Because you can actually fit 4 of them without impinging airflow from the heatsink. Mini HDMI is mechanically ass and I've never seen it anywhere but junky Android tablets.
DP also isn't proprietary.
Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless of what they say, they CAN compete in training and inference, there is literally no alternative to W7900 at the moment. That's 4080 performance with 48Gb VRAM for half of what similar CUDA devices would costs.
How good is it though compared to 5090 with 32GB? 5090 has double the memory bandwidth, which is very important for inference. In many cases where 32GB won't be enough, 48 wouldn't be enough either. Oh and the 5090 is cheaper.
AMD has more FP16 and FP64 flops (but ~1/2 the FP32 flops). Also the AMD is at half the TDP (300 vs 600 W)
Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations
#59Kinda bummed that it’s $50 more than originally said. But if it works well, a single slot card that can be powered by the PCIe slot is super valuable. Hoping there will be some affordable prebuilds so I can run some MoE LLM models.
Competing workstation cards like the RTX A2000 also do not need power connectors.
Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
How good is it though compared to 5090 with 32GB? 5090 has double the memory bandwidth, which is very important for inference. In many cases where 32GB won't be enough, 48 wouldn't be enough either. Oh and the 5090 is cheaper.
AMD has more FP16 and FP64 flops (but ~1/2 the FP32 flops). Also the AMD is at half the TDP (300 vs 600 W)
FP16+ doesn't really matter for local LLM inference, no one can run reasonably big models at FP16.
Usually the models are quantized to 8/4 bits, where the 5090 again demolishes the w7900 by having a multiple of max TOPS.