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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

#131

Post by snowram »

bsder wrote: post #123
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.

I wonder why everyone keep saying "just put more VRAM" yet no cards seem to do that. If it is that easy to compete with Nvidia, why don't we already have those cards?

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

#132

Post by singhrac »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #102
blitzar wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or shrink the margin down to just 50% and sell 10x the number of cards (for the week or two it would take Nvidia to announce a 5090 with 128gb)

Nvidia uses VRAM amount for market segmentation. They can't make a 128GB consumer card without cannibalizing their enterprise sales. Which means Intel or AMD making an affordable high-VRAM card is win-win. If Nvidia responds in kind, Nvidia loses a ton of revenue they'd otherwise have available to outspend their smaller competitors on R&D. If they don't, they keep more of those high-margin customers but now the ones…

This is almost true but not quite - I don't think much of the (dollar) spend on enterprise GPUs (H100, B200, etc.) would transfer if there was a 128 GB consumer card. The problem is both memory bandwidth (HBM) and networking (NVLink), which NVIDIA definitely uses to segment consumer vs enterprise hardware.

I think your argument is still true overall, though, since there are a lot of "gpu poors" (i.e. grad students) who write/invent in the CUDA ecosystem, and they often work in single card settings.

Fwiw Intel did try this with Arctic Sound / Ponte Vecchio, but it was late out the door and did not really perform (see https://chipsandcheese.com/p/intels-ponte-vecchio-chiplets-g...). It seems like they took on a lot of technical risk; hopefully some of that transfers over to a future project though Falcon Shores was cancelled. They really should should have released some of those chips even at a loss, but I don't know the cost of a tape out.

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

#133

Post by blitzar »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #102
blitzar wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or shrink the margin down to just 50% and sell 10x the number of cards (for the week or two it would take Nvidia to announce a 5090 with 128gb)

Nvidia uses VRAM amount for market segmentation. They can't make a 128GB consumer card without cannibalizing their enterprise sales. Which means Intel or AMD making an affordable high-VRAM card is win-win. If Nvidia responds in kind, Nvidia loses a ton of revenue they'd otherwise have available to outspend their smaller competitors on R&D. If they don't, they keep more of those high-margin customers but now the ones…

> Intel or AMD making an affordable high-VRAM card is win-win.

100% agree. CUDA is a bit of a moat, but the earlier in the hype cycle viable alternatives appear, the more likely the non CUDA ecosystem becomes viable.

> It's not clear what they're thinking by not offering this.

They either dont like making money or have a fantasy that one day soon they will be able to sell pallets of $100,000 GPUs they made for $2.50 like Nvidia can. It doesn't take a PhD and MBA to figure out that the only reason Nvidia have, what should be a short term market available to them is the failings of Intel and AMD and the VC / Innovation side to offer any competition.

It is such an obvious win-win that it would probably be worth skipping the engineering and just announcing the product, for sale by the end of the year and force everyones hand.

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

#134

Post by rocqua »

snowram wrote: post #131
bsder wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder why everyone keep saying "just put more VRAM" yet no cards seem to do that. If it is that easy to compete with Nvidia, why don't we already have those cards?

I believe that VRAM has massively shot up in price, so this is where a large part of the costs are. Besides I wouldn't be very surprised if Nvidia has such strong market share they can effectively tell suppliers to not let others sell high capacity cards. Especially because VRAM suppliers might worry about ramping up production too much and then being left with an oversupply situation.

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

#135

Post by rocqua »

imiric wrote: post #111
Ekaros wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure there is significant enough market for those. That is selling enough consumer units to cover all design and other costs. From gamer perspective 16GB is now a reasonable point. 32GB is most one would really want and even that not at more than say 100 more price point. This to me is the gamer perspective. This segment really does not need even 32GB, let alone 64GB or more.

> I am not sure there is significant enough market for those. How so? The prosumer local AI market is quite large and growing every day, and is much more lucrative per capita than the gamer market. Gamers are an afterthought for GPU manufacturers. NVIDIA has been neglecting the segment for years, and is now much more focused on enterprise and AI workloads. Gamers get marginal performance bumps each generation, and si…

Why would intel willingly join this cartel then?

Their GPU business is a slow upstart. If they have a play that could massively disrupt the competition, and has a small chance of epic failure, that should be very attractive to them.

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

#136

Post by blkhawk »

snowram wrote: post #131
bsder wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder why everyone keep saying "just put more VRAM" yet no cards seem to do that. If it is that easy to compete with Nvidia, why don't we already have those cards?

because the cards already sell at very very good prices with 16GB and optimizations in generative AI is bringing down memory requirements. Optimizing profits means yyou sell with the least amount of VRAM possible not only to save the direct cost of the RAM but also to guard future profit and your other market segments. the cost of the ram itself is almost nothing compared to that. any intel competitor can more easily release products with more than 16GB and smoke them. Intel tries for a market segment that was only served by gaming cards twice as expensive up until now. this frees those up to be finally sold at MSRP.

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

#137

Post by blitzar »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #130
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.

>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.

There are also 3 who, for retro reasons, want GPUs to have 8 bits and 256MB or less of VRAM

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

#138

Post by agilob »

snowram wrote: post #131
bsder wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder why everyone keep saying "just put more VRAM" yet no cards seem to do that. If it is that easy to compete with Nvidia, why don't we already have those cards?

AMD is growing up into doing that, they have a few decent cards with 20Gb and 24Gb now

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

#139

Post by ginko »

kristopolous wrote: post #124
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

That only runs Mac OS so it's useless.

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

#140

Post by kristopolous »

ginko wrote: post #139
kristopolous wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want an M3 ultra Mac studio

That only runs Mac OS so it's useless.

for ai workloads? You're wrong. I use mine as a server, just ssh into it. I don't even have a keyboard or display hooked up to it.

You can get 96gb of vram and about 40-70% the speed of a 4090 for $4000.

Especially when you are running a large number of applications you want to talk to each other it makes sense ... the only way to do it on a 4090 is to hit disk, shut the application down, start up the other applciation, read from disk ... it's slowwww... the other option is a multi-gpu system but then it gets into real money.

trust me, it's a gamechanger. I just have it sitting in a closet. Use it all the time.

The other nice thing is unlike with any Nvidia product, you can walk into an apple store, pay the retail price and get it right away. No scalpers, no hunting.

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