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Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

arstechnica.com

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Re: Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

#131

Post by errantspark »

NonContro wrote: post #120
Exmoor wrote: post #11

As TFA rightly points out, unless something drastically changes in the next ~6mo, Intel is going to launch into the most favorable market situation we've seen in our lifetimes. Previously, the expectation is that they needed to introduce something that was competitive with the top end cards from nVidia and AMD. With basically all GPU's out of stock currently they really just need to introduce something competitive wi…

How long will that situation last though, with Ethereum 2.0 around the corner and the next difficulty bomb scheduled for December? https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/olla5w/eip_3554_o... Intel could be launching their cards into a GPU surplus... That's discrete GPUs though, presumably the major volumes are in laptop GPUs? Will Intel have a CPU+GPU combo product for laptops?

> How long will that situation last though

Probably until at least 2022 because the shortage of GPUs isn't solely because of crypto. Until we generally get back on track tricking sand to think we're not going to be able to saturate demand.

> Will Intel have a CPU+GPU combo product for laptops?

What? Obviously the answer is yes, how could it possibly be no? CPU+GPU combo is the only GPU related segment where Intel currently has a product.

Re: Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

#132

Post by cinntaile »

orra wrote: post #129
NonContro wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long will that situation last though, with Ethereum 2.0 around the corner and the next difficulty bomb scheduled for December? https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/olla5w/eip_3554_o... Intel could be launching their cards into a GPU surplus... That's discrete GPUs though, presumably the major volumes are in laptop GPUs? Will Intel have a CPU+GPU combo product for laptops?

Alas: Bitcoin.

You don't mine bitcoin with a GPU, those days are long gone.

Re: Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

#133

Post by acdha »

dleslie wrote: post #126
acdha wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was that billed as a serious gaming GPU? I don't remember the i740 as anything other than a low-budget option.

It was sold as a serious gaming GPU. Recall that this was an era where GPUs weren't yet a thing; instead there was 2D video cards and 3D accelerators that paired with. The i740 and TNT paved the way toward GPUs, while I don't recall whether either had programmable pipelines they both had 2D capacity. For budget gamers, it wasn't a _terrible_ choice to purchase an i740 for the combined 2D/3D ability.

I definitely remember that era, I just don't remember that having anything other than an entry-level label. It's possible that this could have been due to the lackluster results — Wikipedia definitely supports the interpretation that the image changed in the months before it launched:

> In the lead-up to the i740's introduction, the press widely commented that it would drive all of the smaller vendors from the market. As the introduction approached, rumors of poor performance started circulating. … The i740 was released in February 1998, at $34.50 in large quantities.

However, this suggests that it was never going to be a top-end contender since it was engineered to hit a lower price point and was significantly under-specced compared to the competitors which were already on the market:

> The i740 was clocked at 66Mhz and had 2-8MB of VRAM; significantly less than its competitors which had 8-32MB of VRAM, allowing the card to be sold at a low price. The small amount of VRAM meant that it was only used as a frame buffer, hence it used the AGP interface to access the system's main memory to store textures; this was a fatal flaw that took away memory bandwidth and capacity from the CPU, reducing its performance, while also making the card slower since it had to go through the AGP interface to access the main memory which was slower than its VRAM.

Re: Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

#134

Post by pjmlp »

015a wrote: post #128
pjmlp wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam will hardly change the 1% status of GNU/Linux desktop. Many forget that most studios don't bother to port their Android games to GNU/Linux, which are mostly written using the NDK, so plain ISO C and C++, GL, Vulkan, OpenSL,..., yet no GNU/Linux, because the market just isn't there.

The first wave of Steam Decks sold out in minutes. They're now pushing back delivery to Q2 2022. The demand for the device is pretty significant; not New Console large, but its definitely big enough to be visible in the Steam Hardware Survey upon release later this year, despite the vast size of Steam's overall playerbase. Two weeks ago, the Hardware Survey reported Linux breaching 1% for the first time ever [1], for…

It took 20 years to reach 1%, so...

I believed in it back in the Loki golden days, nowadays I rather bet on macOS, Windows, mobile OSes and game consoles.

It remains to be seen how the Steam fairs versus the Steam Machines of yore.

Re: Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

#135

Post by dleslie »

acdha wrote: post #133
dleslie wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was sold as a serious gaming GPU. Recall that this was an era where GPUs weren't yet a thing; instead there was 2D video cards and 3D accelerators that paired with. The i740 and TNT paved the way toward GPUs, while I don't recall whether either had programmable pipelines they both had 2D capacity. For budget gamers, it wasn't a _terrible_ choice to purchase an i740 for the combined 2D/3D ability.

I definitely remember that era, I just don't remember that having anything other than an entry-level label. It's possible that this could have been due to the lackluster results — Wikipedia definitely supports the interpretation that the image changed in the months before it launched: > In the lead-up to the i740's introduction, the press widely commented that it would drive all of the smaller vendors from the market…

It was never aimed at top-end, but that doesn't mean it wasn't serious about being viable as a gaming device.

And it was, I used it for years.

Re: Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

#136

Post by deaddodo »

agloeregrets wrote: post #110
rasz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would think that. GamersNexus did try Intels finest, and it doesnt look pretty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSseaknEv9Q We Got an Intel GPU: Intel Iris Xe DG1 Video Card Review, Benchmarks, & Architecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW4U6n-r3_0 Intel GPU A Real Threat: Adobe Premiere, Handbrake, & Production Benchmarks on DG1 Iris Xe Its below GT1030 with a lot of issues.

DG1 isn't remotely related to Arc. For one, it's not even using the same node nor architecture.

That's not quite true. The Arc was originally known as the DG2 and is the successor to the DG1. So to say it isn't "remotely related" is a bit misleading, especially since we have very little information on the architecture.

Re: Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

#137

Post by at_a_remove »

noleetcode wrote: post #117
at_a_remove wrote: post #43

I find myself needing, for the first time ever, a high-end video card for some heavy video encoding, and when I look, they're all gone, apparently in a tug of war between gamers and crypto miners. At the exact same time, I am throwing out a box of old video cards from the mid-nineties (Trident, Diamond Stealth) and from the looks of it you can list them on eBay but they don't even sell. Now Intel is about to leap int…

I will, quite literally, take those old video cards off your hands. I have a hoarder mentality when it comes to old tech and love collecting it.

That involves shipping, though. It wouldn't be worth it to you to have my old 14.4 Kbps modem and all of the attendant junk I have.

Re: Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

#138

Post by pjmlp »

byefruit wrote: post #9

I really hope this breaks Nvidia's stranglehold on deep learning. Some competition would hopefully bring down prices at the compute high-end. AMD don't seem to even be trying on the software-side at the moment. ROCm is a mess.

You know how to break it?

With modern tooling.

Instead of forcing devs to live in the pre-historic days of C dialects and printf debugging, provide polyglot IDEs with graphical debugging tools capable of single step GPU shaders and a rich libraries ecosystem.

Khronos got the message too late and now no one cares.

Re: Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

#139

Post by dathinab »

davidjytang wrote: post #69
ayngg wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought they are using TSMC for their gpu, which means they will be part of the same bottleneck that is affecting everyone else.

I believe nvidia doesn't use TSMC or not only use TSMC.

Independent of the question around TSMC they are still affected as:

- Shortages and price hikes caused by various effect are not limit to the GPU chiplet but also most other parts on the GPU.

- Especially it also affects the RAM they are using, which can be a big deal wrt. pricing and availability.

Re: Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

#140

Post by pjmlp »

rowanG077 wrote: post #20
byefruit wrote: post #9

I really hope this breaks Nvidia's stranglehold on deep learning. Some competition would hopefully bring down prices at the compute high-end. AMD don't seem to even be trying on the software-side at the moment. ROCm is a mess.

I think this situation can only be fixed by moving up into languages that compile to vendor specific GPU languages. Just treat CUDA, openCL, vulkan compute, metal compute(??) etc. as the assembly of graphics cards.

That is just part of the story.

CUDA wiped out OpenCL, because it went polyglot as of version 3.0, while insisting that everyone should write in a C dialect.

They also provide great graphical debugging tools and libraries.

Khronos waited too long to introduce SPIR, and in traditional Khronos fashion, waited for the partners to provide the tooling.

One could blame NVidia, but it isn't as the competition has done a better job.

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