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

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141–150 of 274 posts

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

#141
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.

Another use for high RAM GPUs is the simulation of turbulent flows for research. Compared to CPU, GPU Navier-Stokes solvers are super fast, but the size of the simulated domain is limited by the RAM.

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

#142
If you buy Intel Arc cards for their competitive video encoding/decoding capabilities, it appears that all of them are still capped at 8 parallel streams. The "B" series have more headroom at high resolutions and bitrates, on the other hand some "A" series cards need only a single PCIe slot so you can stick more of them into a single server.

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

#143
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'd much prefer paying 3x cost for 3x VRAM

Why not just buy 3 card then? These cards doesn't require active cooling anyways and you can just fit 3 in decent sized case. You will get 3x VRAM speed and 3x compute. And if your usecase is llm inference, it will be a lot faster than 1x card with 3x VRAM.

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

#144

Earlier 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.

I’m interested in buying a GPU that costs less than a used car.

Jerry rig MI50 32GiB together and then hate yourself for choosing AMD.

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

#145
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This could well be the reason why the rumored RDNA5 will use LPDDR5X/LPDDR5X instead of GDDR7 memory, at least for the low/mid range configurations (the top-spec and enthusiast configurations AT0 and AT2 configurations will still use GDDR7 it seems).

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

#146
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m interested in putting one of these in a server because of the relatively low power usage and compact size.

Why would you need a dedicated graphics card in a server? Usually you wouldn't even have a monitor connected.

Some people are tired of rendering everything on the CPU via AVX.

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

#147
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Especially because VRAM suppliers might worry about ramping up production too much and then being left with an oversupply situation.

Given the high demand of graphic cards, is this a plausible scenario?

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

#148
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m interested in putting one of these in a server because of the relatively low power usage and compact size.

Why would you need a dedicated graphics card in a server? Usually you wouldn't even have a monitor connected.

My guess would be video encoding/decoding and rendering.

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

#149
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't know the full set of differentiators.

For me (not quite at the A1000 level, but just above -- still in the prosumer price range), a major one is ECC.

Thermals and size are a bit better too, but I don't see that as $500 better. I actually don't see (m)any meaningful reasons to step up to an Ax000 series if you don't need ECC, but I'd love to hear otherwise.

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

#150

I really hope Intel continues with GPUs or the GPU market is doomed until China catches up, Nvidia produces good products with great software, best in industry really, with great length support, but that doesn't excuse them from monopolistic practices. The fact that AMD refuses to compete really makes it look like this entire thing is organized from the top (US government). This reminds me a lot of the LLM craze and…

Do you think family relations between the ceos is a factor or thats not rlevant?
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