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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

#151

Post by _zoltan_ »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #143
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…

> 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.

because then instead of RAM bandwidth now you're dealing with PCIe BW which is way less.

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

#152

Post by swores »

syntaxing wrote: post #39
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #38

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...

I'm confused by this line on that page, can anyone explain what they mean?

> "Because 48GB is for spreadsheets, feed your rendering beast with a buffet of VRAM."

Edit: I guess must just be a bad translation or sloppy copywriting, and they mean it's not for just spreadsheets rather than it is...

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

#153

Post by tinco »

colechristensen wrote: post #104
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…

#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

No. The A1000 was well over $500 last year. This is the #3 player coming out with a card that's a better deal than what the #1 player currently has to offer.

I don't get why there's people trying to twist this story or come up with strawmen like the A2000 or even the RTX5000 series. Intel's coming into this market competitively, which as far as I know is a first, and it's also impressive.

Coming into the gaming GPU market had always been too ambitious a goal for Intel, they should have started with competing in the professional GPU market. It's well known that Nvidia and AMD have always been price gouging this market so it's fairly easy to enter it competitively.

If they can enter this market successfully and then work their way up on the food chain then that seems like good way to recover from their initial fiasco.

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

#154

Post by hypercube33 »

hamdingers wrote: post #23
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.

Can't fit 4 of anything else in a half height bracket.

USB-C would fit and has display port alt mode, technically. Not much out there natively supports it. Mini DP can be passively converted to a lot however so I assume that was the choice. Also Nvidia workstation cards have similar port configuration.

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

#155

Post by hengheng »

PostOnce wrote: post #84
cmxch wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maxsun does offer a high VRAM (48GB) dual Arc Pro B60, but the only US availability has it on par with a 5090 at ~$3000.

I think that's actually two GPUs on one card, and not a single GPU with 48GB VRAM

Needs a PCIe bifurcation chip on the main board for all we know. Compatibility is going to be fun.

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

#156

Post by shellwizard »

akaij wrote: post #148
askl wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some Intel and AMD CPU come with an iGPU that you can use to transcode videos even some Xeons, there's no need to add a GPU just for that

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

#157

Post by littlecranky67 »

I am confused as a lot of comments here seem to argue around gaming, but isn't this supposed to be a workstation card, hence not intended to be used for games? The phoronix review also seems to only focus on computing usage, not gaming.

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

#159

Post by Fnoord »

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…

I think the timeline is roughly: SGI (90s), Nvidia gaming (with ATi and then AMD) eating that cake. Then cryptocurrency took off at the end '00s / start '10s, but if we are honest things like hashcat were also already happening. After that AI (LLMs) took off during the pandemic.

During the cryptocurrency hype, GPUs were already going for insane prices and together with low energy prices or surplus (which solar can cause, but nuclear should too) allows even governments to make cheap money (and for hashcat cracking, too). If I was North Korea I'd know my target. Turns out, they did, but in a different way. That was around 2014. Add on top of this Stadia and GeForce Now as examples of renting GPU for gaming (there are more, and Stadia flopped).

I didn't mention LLMs since that has been the most recent development.

All in all, it turns out GPUs are more valuable than what they were sold for if your goal isn't personal computer gaming. Hence the price gone up.

Now, if you want to thoroughly investigate this market you need to figure what large foreign forces (governments, businesses, and criminal enterprises) use these GPUs for. US government is aware for long time of above; hence export restrictions on GPUs. Which are meant as slowing opponent down to catch up. The opponent is the non-free world (China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, ...), though current administration is acting insane.

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

#160

Post by Alifatisk »

A feature I haven't seen someone comment about yet is Project Battlematrix [1][2] with these cards, this allows for multi-GPU AI orchestration. A feature Nvidia offers for enterprise AI workloads (Run:ai), but Intel is bringing this to consumers

1. https://youtu.be/iM58i3prTIU?si=JnErLQSHpxU-DlPP&t=225

2. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/t...

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