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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

#121

Post by imiric »

I really think Intel is on the right track to dethrone both AMD and NVIDIA, while also competing with ARM SoCs. It's fascinating to watch.

Both their integrated and dedicated GPUs have been steadily improving each generation. The Arc line is both cheaper and comparable in performance to more premium NVIDIA cards. The 140T/140V iGPUs do the same to AMD APUs. Their upcoming Panther Lake and Nova Lake architectures seem promising, and will likely push this further. Meanwhile, they're also more power efficient and cooler, to the point where Apple's lead with their ARM SoCs is not far off. Sure, the software ecosystem is not up to par with the competition yet, but that's a much easier problem to solve, and they've been working on that front as well.

I'm holding off on buying a new laptop for a while just to see how this plays out. But I really like how Intel is shaking things up, and not allowing the established players to rest on their laurels.

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

#122

Post by zh3 »

cjbconnor wrote: post #9
bitmasher9 wrote: post #5

It’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.

You can also get GT730's with 4xHDMI - not fast, but great for office work and display/status boards type scenarios. Single slot passive design too, so you can stack several in a single PC. Currently just £63 UK each.

[0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/ASUS-GT730-4H-SL-2GD5-GeForce-multi...

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

#123

Post by bsder »

tester756 wrote: post #17

https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-arc-pro-b50-linux >Overall the Intel Arc Pro B50 was at 1.47x the performance of the NVIDIA RTX A1000 with that mix of OpenGL, Vulkan, and OpenCL/Vulkan compute workloads both synthetic and real-world tests. That is just under Intel's own reported Windows figures of the Arc Pro B50 delivering 1.6x the performance of the RTX A1000 for graphics and 1.7x the performance of the A1000…

Put 32GB on that card and everybody would ignore performance issues.

With 16GB everybody will just call it another in the long list of Intel failures.

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

#124

Post by kristopolous »

mythz wrote: 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…

You want an M3 ultra Mac studio

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

#125

Post by magicalhippo »

kadoban wrote: post #76
syntaxing wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> and requires the board to support pcie bifurcation

And lanes. My board has two PCIe x16 slots fed by the CPU, but if I use both they'll only get x8 lanes each. Thus if I plugged two of these in there, I'd still only have two working GPUs, not four.

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

#126

Post by Rohansi »

fredoralive wrote: post #105
mythz wrote: 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…

Because the market of people who want huge RAM GPUs for home AI tinkering is basically about 3 Hacker News posters. Who probably won’t buy one because it doesn’t support CUDA. PS5 has something like 16GB unified RAM, and no game is going to really push much beyond that in VRAM use, we don’t really get Crysis style system crushers anymore.

> PS5 has something like 16GB unified RAM, and no game is going to really push much beyond that in VRAM use

That's pretty funny considering that PC games are moving more towards 32GB RAM and 8GB+ VRAM. The next generation of consoles will of course increase to make room for higher quality assets.

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

#127

Post by [deleted] »

bilekas wrote: post #112
fredoralive wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the market of people who want huge RAM GPUs for home AI tinkering is basically about 3 Hacker News posters. Who probably won’t buy one because it doesn’t support CUDA. PS5 has something like 16GB unified RAM, and no game is going to really push much beyond that in VRAM use, we don’t really get Crysis style system crushers anymore.

> PS5 has something like 16GB unified RAM, and no game is going to really push much beyond that in VRAM use, we don’t really get Crysis style system crushers anymore. This isn't really true from the recreational card side, nVidia themselves are reducing the number of 8GB models as a sign of market demand [1]. Games these days are regularly maxing out 6 & 8 GB when running anything above 1080p for 60fps. The prevalenc…

[deleted]

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

#128

Post by pjmlp »

bilekas wrote: post #112
fredoralive wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the market of people who want huge RAM GPUs for home AI tinkering is basically about 3 Hacker News posters. Who probably won’t buy one because it doesn’t support CUDA. PS5 has something like 16GB unified RAM, and no game is going to really push much beyond that in VRAM use, we don’t really get Crysis style system crushers anymore.

> PS5 has something like 16GB unified RAM, and no game is going to really push much beyond that in VRAM use, we don’t really get Crysis style system crushers anymore. This isn't really true from the recreational card side, nVidia themselves are reducing the number of 8GB models as a sign of market demand [1]. Games these days are regularly maxing out 6 & 8 GB when running anything above 1080p for 60fps. The prevalenc…

As someone that started on 8 bit computing, Tim Sweeny is right the Electron garbage culture when applied to Unreal 5 is one of the reasons so much RAM is needed, with such bad performance.

While I dislike some of the handmade hero culture, in one thing they are right, regarding how bad modern hardware happens to be used.

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

#129

Post by magicalhippo »

blagie wrote: post #115
colechristensen wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#3 player just released something that compares well with price/performace ratio compared to #1 player's release from a year and a half ago... yep

Well, no. It doesn't. The comparison is to the A1000. Toss in a 5060 Ti into the compare table, and we're in an entirely different playing field. There are reasons to buy the workstation NVidia cards over the consumer ones, but those mostly go away when looking at something like the new Intel. Unless one is in an exceptionally power-constrained environment, yet has room for a full-sized card (not SFF or laptop), I ca…

> There are reasons to buy the workstation NVidia cards over the consumer ones

I seem to recall certain esoteric OpenGL things like lines being fast was a NVIDIA marketing differentiator, as only certain CAD packages or similar cared about that. Is this still the case, or has that software segment moved on now?

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

#130

Post by FirmwareBurner »

fredoralive wrote: post #105
mythz wrote: 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…

Because the market of people who want huge RAM GPUs for home AI tinkering is basically about 3 Hacker News posters. Who probably won’t buy one because it doesn’t support CUDA. PS5 has something like 16GB unified RAM, and no game is going to really push much beyond that in VRAM use, we don’t really get Crysis style system crushers anymore.

>Because the market of people who want huge RAM GPUs for home AI tinkering is basically about 3 Hacker News posters

You're wrong. It's probably more like 9 HN posters.

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