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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

#261

Post by unsnap_biceps »

mwpmaybe wrote: post #260
unsnap_biceps wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even those still require a https://www.store.level1techs.com/products/p/dp-repeater-hdm... per port to make it so the computer doesn't detect the monitor switching away. I have a Level1Techs hdmi KVM and it's awesome, and I'd totally buy a display port one once it has built in EDID cloners, but even at their super premium price point, it's just not something they're willing to do yet.

I have Linux (AMD RDNA2), Windows (NVIDIA Ada), and Mac (M3) systems hooked up to my L1T DP1.4 KVM[1] without any other gadgets and they all work fine. What problem(s) are you trying to solve/did you solve with the EDID cloner? 1. https://www.store.level1techs.com/products/p/14-display-port...

Without the EDID cloner, when you switch the KVM away from the system, it receives a monitor disconnect event. When you switch it back, it receives a monitor connect event. There are OS settings that help make it so that the windows end up back where they started, but not all programs support this well. With a EDID cloner in place, the computer never detects that the monitor shifted at all and so nothing gets repositioned and apps just carry on.

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

#262

Post by singhrac »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #257
singhrac wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) w…

NVLink matters if you want to combine a whole bunch of GPUs, e.g. you need more VRAM than any individual GPU is available with. Many workloads exist that don't care about that or don't have working sets that large, particularly if the individual GPU actually has a lot of VRAM. If you need 128GB and you have GPUs with 40GB of VRAM then you need a fast interconnect. If you can get an individual GPU with 128GB, you don'…

I think we might just disagree about how much of the GPU spend is on small vs large model (inference or training). I think it’s something like 99.9% of spending interest is on models that don’t fit into 128 GB (remember KV cache matters too). Happy to be proven wrong!

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

#263

Post by justsomehnguy »

derefr wrote: post #240
robotnikman wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GIGABYTE recently did this with their new 'AI' box https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-N5090IXEB-32GD

That misses the "vertically integrated" part. (As does everything else right now, which was my point.) The thing you linked is just a regular Gigabyte-branded 5090 PCIe GPU card (that they produced first, for other purposes; and which does fit into a regular x16 PCIe slot in a standard ATX chassis), put into a (later-designed) custom eGPU enclosure. The eGPU box has some custom cooling [that replaces the card's usual…

> Gigabyte-branded 5090 PCIe GPU

The hottest one on the consumer market

> The eGPU box has some custom cooling

Custom liquid cooling to tame the enormous TDP

> and a nice little PSU

Yeah, an 850W one.

>were to design one of their GPU cards specifically and only to be shipped inside an eGPU enclosure that was designed together with it

And why they would do so?

Do you understand what it would drive the price a lot?

> at a better price(!)

With less production/sales numbers than a regular 5090 GPU? No way. Economics 101.

> the card being this weird nonstandard-form-factor non-card-edged thing

Even if we skip the small series nuances (which makes this a non-starter by the price alone), there is a little what some other 'nonstandard-form-factor' can do for the cooling - you still need the RAM near the chip... and that's all. You just designed the same PCIe card for the sake of it being incompatible..

> won't ... plug into a PCIe slot

Again - why? What this would provide what the current PCIe GPU lacks? BTW you still need the 16 lines of PCIe and you know which connector provides the most useful and cost effective way to do so? A regular 16x PCIe connector. That one you ditched.

> the card being shaped less like a peripheral card and more like a motherboard

You don't need to 're-design it from scratch', it's enough not to be constrained with a 25cm limit to have a proper air-flow along a properly oriented radiator.

> why those factory-sealed Samsung T-series external NVMe pucks

Lol: https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-am-i-taking-this-samsung-t...

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

#264

Post by kadoban »

altcognito wrote: post #186
solardev wrote: post #185

Will Intel even be around in a few years to support this thing, especially in software? They seem to be in their death spasms...

Intel is doing poorly, but I believe Apple was in much, much worse shape than this in the early 2000's. AMD was also in much, much worse shape that this. Intel has many, many solid customers at the government, enterprise and consumer levels. They will be around.

> Intel is doing poorly, but I believe Apple was in much, much worse shape than this in the early 2000's. AMD was also in much, much worse shape that this.

Were they really? I don't think Intel is going anywhere any time soon either, but damn do they seem in bad shape. AMD, didn't they just have lackluster products for a few years and they were kind of the scrappy budget underdogs? I don't recall their fate seeming so...hopeless.

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

#265

Post by fwipsy »

fwipsy wrote: post #258
vid wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of local AI hobbyists, just visit /r/LocalLLama to see how many are using 8GB cards, or all the people asking for higher RAM version of cards. This makes it mysterious since clearly CUDA is an advantage, but higher VRAM lower cost cards with decent open library support would be compelling.

r/LocalLLaMA has 90,000 subscribers. r/PCMasterRace has 9,000,000. I'll bet there are a lot more casual PC gamers who don't talk about it online than there are casual local AI users, too.

Sorry. r/LocalLLaMA has 533k; r/PCMasterRce has 16m.

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

#266

Post by pjmlp »

Rohansi wrote: post #252
pjmlp wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many cases due to bad programming, fixed by adding more RAM.

Sure, but not always. Future games will have more detailed assets which will require more memory. Running at 4K or higher resolution will be more common which also requires more memory.

"Because in the real world, I have to write up lists of stuff I have to go to the grocery store to buy. And I have never thought to myself that realism is fun. I go play games to have fun."

Gabe Newell - https://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-says-games-dont-need-...

Detailed assets don't equate good games.

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

#267

Post by rkomorn »

rvba wrote: post #218
rkomorn wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. A decade ago, I put 64GB of RAM in a PC and my friend asked me why I needed that much and I replied "so I can say I have 64GB RAM". The only time usage was "high" was when I created a VM with 48GB RAM just for kicks. It was useless. But I could say I had 64GB RAM.

My work computer with Widnows, Outlook, few tabs open and Excel already craps put with 16 GB If you hae a private computer, why wpuld you even bug something with 16GB in 2025? My 10 year old laptop had that much. Im looking for a new laptop and Im looking at a 128GB setup - so those 200 chrome tabs can eat it, I have space to run other stuff, like those horrible electron chat apps + a game

I have 64GB in my current machine and, TBH, it's more than enough.

But if I were to upgrade, I'd still get at least 128GB. Nobody's gonna be impressed with 64GB anymore. I don't need that in my life...

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

#268

Post by kokada »

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #211
kokada wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

AFAIK, RDNA5 has been cancelled as AMD is moving back to a unified architecture with their Instinct and Radeon lines.

It is not really clear if it will be called as UDNA or RDNA5, I was just referring to the next-gen graphics architecture from AMD and referring as RDNA5 is just clearer that this is the next-gen architecture.

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

#269

Post by doctorpangloss »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #256
prmoustache wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The increase in the amount people would be willing to pay for a card with more VRAM is unambiguously more than the increase in the manufacturing cost. I guess you already have the paper if it is that unambiguous. Would you mond sharing the data/source?

The cost of more pins is linear in the number of pins, and the pins aren't the only component of the manufacturing cost, so a card with twice as many pins will have a manufacturing cost of significantly less than twice that of a card with half as many pins. Cards with 16GB of VRAM exist for ~$300 retail. Cards with 80GB of VRAM cost >$15,000 and customers pay that. A card with 80GB of VRAM could be sold for $15,000.…

> the manufacturing cost is less than five times as much

They don’t manufacture the RAM. This isn’t complicated. They make less margin (a percentage) in your scenario. And that’s what Wall Street cares about.

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

#270

Post by AnthonyMouse »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #269
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of more pins is linear in the number of pins, and the pins aren't the only component of the manufacturing cost, so a card with twice as many pins will have a manufacturing cost of significantly less than twice that of a card with half as many pins. Cards with 16GB of VRAM exist for ~$300 retail. Cards with 80GB of VRAM cost >$15,000 and customers pay that. A card with 80GB of VRAM could be sold for $15,000.…

> the manufacturing cost is less than five times as much They don’t manufacture the RAM. This isn’t complicated. They make less margin (a percentage) in your scenario. And that’s what Wall Street cares about.

They don't really manufacture anything. TSMC or Samsung make the chip and Samsung, Micron or Hynix make the RAM. Even Intel's GPUs are TSMC.

Also, Wall St cares about profit, not margins. If you can move a billion units with a $100 margin, they're going to like you a lot better than if you move a million units with a $1000 margin.

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