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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

#161

Post by mythz »

_zoltan_ wrote: post #151
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Also less power efficient, takes up more PCI slots and a lot of software doesn't support GPU clustering. Already have 4x 16GB GPUs which is unable to run large models exceeding 16GB.

Currently running them different VMs to be able to make full use of them, used to have them running in different docker containers however OOM Exceptions would frequently bring down the whole server, which running in VMs helped resolve.

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

#162

Post by williamdclt »

GTP wrote: post #147
rocqua wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't really know what I'm talking about (whether about graphic cards or in AI inference), but if someone figures out how to cut the compute needed for AI inference significantly then I'd guess the demand for graphic cards would suddenly drop?

Given how young and volatile this domain still is, it doesn't seem unreasonable to be wary of it. Big players (google, openai and the likes) are probably pouring tons of money into trying to do exactly that

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

#164

Post by YetAnotherNick »

_zoltan_ wrote: post #151
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

For LLM inference of batch size 1, it's hard to be saturate PCIe bandwidth specially for less powerful chips. You would get close to linear performance[1]. The obvious issue is few things on multiple GPU is harder, and many softwares don't fully support it or isn't optimized for it.

[1]: https://github.com/XiongjieDai/GPU-Benchmarks-on-LLM-Inferen...

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

#165

Post by nottorp »

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.

HDMI is shit. If you've never had problems with random machine hdmi port -> hdmi cable -> hdmi port on monitor you just haven't had enough monitors.

> Is HDMI seen as a “gaming” feature

It's a tv content protection feature. Sometimes it degrades the signal so you feel like you're watching tv. I've had this monitor/machine combination that identified my monitor as a tv over hdmi and switched to ycbcr just because it wanted to, with assorted color bleed on red text.

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

#166

Post by anthk »

pjmlp wrote: post #128
bilekas wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I remember UE1 being playable even software mode, such as the first Deus EX. Now, I think the Surreal Engine (UE1 reimplementation) needs damn GL 3.3 (if not 4.5 and Vulkan) to play games I used to play in an Athlon. Now I can't use surreal to Play DX on my legacy n270 netbook with GL 2.1... something that was more than enough to play the game at 800x600 with everything turned on and much more.

A good thing is that I turned myself into libre/indie gaming with games such as Cataclysm DDA:Bright Ness with far less requeriments than a UE5 game and yet being enyojable due to playability and in-game lore (and a proper ending compared to vanilla CDDA).

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

#168

Post by moffkalast »

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…

> 1.7x the performance of the A1000 for AI inference

That's a bold claim when their acceleration software (IPEX) is barely maintained and incompatible with most inference stacks, and their Vulkan driver is far behind it in performance.

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

#169

Post by keyringlight »

anthk wrote: post #166
pjmlp wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I remember UE1 being playable even software mode, such as the first Deus EX. Now, I think the Surreal Engine (UE1 reimplementation) needs damn GL 3.3 (if not 4.5 and Vulkan) to play games I used to play in an Athlon. Now I can't use surreal to Play DX on my legacy n270 netbook with GL 2.1... something that was more than enough to play the game at 800x600 with everything turned on and much more. A good thing is that I…

UE1 was in the timeframe that 3D acceleration was only starting to get adopted, and IIRC from some interview Epic continued with a software option for UT2003/2004 (licensed pixomatic?) because they found out a lot of players were still playing their games on systems where full GPUs weren't always available, such as laptops.

I know this is going back to Intel's Larrabee where they tried it, but I'd be real interested to see what the limits of a software renderer is now considering the comparative strength of modern processors and amount of multiprocessing. While I know there's DXVK or projects like dgVoodoo2 which can be an option with sometimes better backwards compatibility, just software would seem like a stable reference target than the gradually shifting landscape of GPUs/drivers/APIs

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

#170

Post by betimsl »

blkhawk wrote: post #136
snowram wrote: post #131

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?

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…

Right, but Intel is in no position to do that. So, they could play and put 32GB VRAM and also, why not produce one with 64GB just for kicks?
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