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Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations

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Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations

#71

Kinda 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.

Am i missing anything ?, because it looks like a double slot GPU.

Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations

#72

Compact? Looks about a foot long and two slots wide. Not abnormal but not what I’d call compact either.

Agreed. I have an A40 GPU in an epyc system right now specifically because it's a single slot card. I did not pay for gobs of PCIE expansion in this system just to block slots with double wide GPUs. Sure it can't do the heavy lift of some beefier cards but there is a need for single space cards still.

Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations

#73
Really confused why the Intel and AMD both continue to struggle and yet still refuse to offer what Nvidia wont, i.e. high ram consumer GPUs. I'd much prefer paying 3x cost for 3x VRAM (48GB/$1047), 6x cost for 6x VRAM (96GB/$2094), 12x cost for 12x VRAM (192GB/$4188), etc. They'd sell like hotcakes and software support would quickly improve.

At 16GB I'd still prefer to pay a premium for NVidia GPUs given its superior ecosystem, I really want to get off NVidia but Intel/AMD isn't giving me any reason to.

Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations

#74
post #73

Really confused why the Intel and AMD both continue to struggle and yet still refuse to offer what Nvidia wont, i.e. high ram consumer GPUs. I'd much prefer paying 3x cost for 3x VRAM (48GB/$1047), 6x cost for 6x VRAM (96GB/$2094), 12x cost for 12x VRAM (192GB/$4188), etc. They'd sell like hotcakes and software support would quickly improve. At 16GB I'd still prefer to pay a premium for NVidia GPUs given its superior…

they don't manufacture RAM, so none of the margin goes to them

Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations

#75
post #73

Really confused why the Intel and AMD both continue to struggle and yet still refuse to offer what Nvidia wont, i.e. high ram consumer GPUs. I'd much prefer paying 3x cost for 3x VRAM (48GB/$1047), 6x cost for 6x VRAM (96GB/$2094), 12x cost for 12x VRAM (192GB/$4188), etc. They'd sell like hotcakes and software support would quickly improve. At 16GB I'd still prefer to pay a premium for NVidia GPUs given its superior…

they don't manufacture RAM, so none of the margin goes to them

Even if they put out some super high memory models and just pass the ram through at cost it would increase sales -- potentially quite dramatically and increase their total income a lot and have a good chance of transitioning to being a market leader rather than an also-ran.

AMD has lagged so long because of the software ecosystem but the climate now is that they'd only need to support a couple popular model architectures to immediately grab a lot of business. The failure to do so is inexplicable.

I expect we will eventually learn that this was about yet another instance of anti-competitive collusion.

Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably better off with the incoming B60 which has 24GB vram.

There’s a 48GB B60 already [1] but it’s definitely a significant amount more than 3X B50 pro (you obviously get way better performance). [1] https://www.maxsun.com/products/intel-arc-pro-b60-dual-48g-t...

> There’s a 48GB B60 already

Kind of. It's more two 24gb b60s in a trenchcoat. It connects to one slot but it's two completely separate gpus and requires the board to support pcie bifurcation.

Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations

#77
post #73

Really confused why the Intel and AMD both continue to struggle and yet still refuse to offer what Nvidia wont, i.e. high ram consumer GPUs. I'd much prefer paying 3x cost for 3x VRAM (48GB/$1047), 6x cost for 6x VRAM (96GB/$2094), 12x cost for 12x VRAM (192GB/$4188), etc. They'd sell like hotcakes and software support would quickly improve. At 16GB I'd still prefer to pay a premium for NVidia GPUs given its superior…

This card does have double the VRAM of the more expensive Nvidia competitor (the A1000, which has 8 GB), but I take your point that it doesn't feel like quite enough to justify giving up the Nvidia ecosystem. The memory bandwidth is also... not great.

They also announced a 24 GB B60 and a double-GPU version of the same (saves you physical slots), but it seems like they don't have a release date yet (?).

Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations

#78
post #73

Really confused why the Intel and AMD both continue to struggle and yet still refuse to offer what Nvidia wont, i.e. high ram consumer GPUs. I'd much prefer paying 3x cost for 3x VRAM (48GB/$1047), 6x cost for 6x VRAM (96GB/$2094), 12x cost for 12x VRAM (192GB/$4188), etc. They'd sell like hotcakes and software support would quickly improve. At 16GB I'd still prefer to pay a premium for NVidia GPUs given its superior…

I doubt you'd get linear scaling of price/capacity - the larger capacity modules are more expensive per GB than smaller ones, and in some cases are supply constrained.

The number of chips on the bus is usually pretty low (1 or 2 of them on most GPUs), so GPUs tend to have to scale out their memory bus widths to get to higher capacity. That's expensive and takes up die space, and for the conventional case (games) isn't generally needed on low end cards.

What really needs to happen is someone needs to make some "system seller" game that is incredibly popular and requires like 48GB of memory on the GPU to build demand. But then you have a chicken/egg problem.

Example: https://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5090-128-gb-memory-g...

Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations

#79

Compact? Looks about a foot long and two slots wide. Not abnormal but not what I’d call compact either.

It's half-height (fits in "slim" desktops, those media center PCs, and in a 2U server without having to turn it sideways/use a riser), and barely longer than the PCIe socket. Phoronix has a picture with a full-height bracket which maybe gives a better point of comparison: https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-arc-pro-b50-linux

(A half-height single-slot card would be even smaller, but those are vanishingly rare these days. This is pretty much as small as GPUs get unless you're looking more for a "video adapter" than a GPU.)

Re: Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations

#80

The new CEO of Intel has said that Intel is giving up competing with Nvidia. Why would you bother with any Intel product with an attitude like that, gives zero confidence in the company. What business is Intel in, if not competing with Nvidia and AMD. Is it giving up competing with AMD too?

Isn't Intel the only largely domestic fab
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