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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

#191

Post by jholman »

deadmutex wrote: post #121
mey wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refuse to engage with the current GPU pricing insanity, so my 5900x is currently paired with a 960 GTX. When Intel enters the market it will be another factor in driving pricing back down, so might play Cyberpunk in 2022...

If you really want to play Cyberpunk on PC, and don't want to buy a new GPU.. playing it on Stadia is an option (especially if you have a GPU that can support VP9 decoding). I played it at 4K/1080p, and it looked pretty good. However, I think if you want the best graphics fidelity (i.e. 4K RayTracing), then you probably do want to just get a high end video card. Disclosure: Work at Google, but not on Stadia.

It's always a quiet little pleasure when someone uses "disclosure" correctly. :)

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

#192

Post by BuckRogers »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #155
BuckRogers wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have sources for any of your claims? Other than going fabless being a fantastic way to cut costs and management challenges, but increase longterm supply line risk, none of that is anything that I've heard. Here are sources for my claims. AMD on TSMC 3nm for Zen5. Will be squeezed by Intel and Apple- https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-3nm-zen5-apus-codenamed-stri... Intel consuming a good portion of TSMC 3nm- http…

> Will be squeezed by Intel and Apple This doesn't really work. If there is more demand, they'll build more fabs. It doesn't happen overnight -- that's why we're in a crunch right now -- but we're talking about years of lead time here. TSMC is also not stupid. It's better for them for their customers to compete with each other instead of having to negotiate with a monopolist, so their incentive is to make sure none o…

>TSMC is also not stupid. It's better for them for their customers to compete

It depends how much money is involved. I don't think TSMC, nor any business is the master chess player you're envisioning, losing billions to instead worry about AMD's woes. But rather consider AMD's troubles as something they'll have to sort out on their own in due time. They're on their own.

Now, AMD and TSMC do have a good relationship. But large infusions of wealth corrupt even the most stalwart companions. This is one of those things that people don't need to debate, we'll see the results on 3nm. At a minimum, it looks like Intel is going to push AMD out of TSMC's leading nodes. There's no way to size this up as good news for AMD.

>If Intel uses TSMC's fabs, TSMC makes money and uses the money to improve TSMC's process which AMD does use.

TSMC is going to make money without Intel anyway. Choking AMD may not be their intention, but it's certainly a guaranteed side effect of it. Intel makes so much product that they are capable of using up their own space, and others. And now the GPUs are coming. Intel makes 10-times the profit AMD does per year. If AMD didn't have an x86 license, no one would utter these two companies names in the same sentence.

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

#193

Post by pjmlp »

ineedasername wrote: post #170
pjmlp wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What's the rate of increase though? Has it been linear, 0.05% per year? No: it has increased about 0.25% since 2019. It's not just that Linux is increasing, it's that it's rate of increase is also increasing.

For me that is wishful thinking that ignores increases in other platforms.

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

#194

Post by Smithalicious »

pjmlp wrote: post #106
015a wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup; three other points I'd add: 1) I hate to say "year of desktop Linux" like every year, but with the Steam Deck release later this year, and Valve's commitment to continue investing and collaborating on Proton to ensure wide-range game support; Linux gaming is going to grow substantially throughout 2022, if only due to the new devices added by Steam Decks. Intel has always had fantastic Linux video driver support.…

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.

I think talking about android games is moving the goalposts a bit. There's no market for Android games on windows either.

On my end, and my Year of Linux Desktop started almost a decade ago, the Linux experience has not only never been better (of course) but has improved faster in recent years than ever before, and gaming is one of the fastest improving areas.

Proton is a fantastic piece of software.

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

#195

Post by onli »

pjmlp wrote: post #188
onli wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't let history blind you to the now ;) It's way better now than it was back then. There was a long period of good ports, which combined with the Steam for Linux client made Linux gaming a real thing already. But instead of fizzling out like the last time there were ports, now Linux transitioned to "Run every game" without needing a port. Some exceptions, but they are working on it and compatibility is huge. This w…

Just like everyone would migrate to GNU/Linux because of DirectX 10 being Vista only, or OpenGL being replaced by Metal?

Vista brought a lot of migration to Linux indeed. And the Mac being incapable of playing games is a factor for quite some people. But until recently, gaming on Linux was limited.

No one said everyone though.

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

#196

Post by pjmlp »

onli wrote: post #195
pjmlp wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like everyone would migrate to GNU/Linux because of DirectX 10 being Vista only, or OpenGL being replaced by Metal?

Vista brought a lot of migration to Linux indeed. And the Mac being incapable of playing games is a factor for quite some people. But until recently, gaming on Linux was limited. No one said everyone though.

Yeah otherwise it would be even less than 1% nowadays.

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

#197

Post by pjmlp »

Smithalicious wrote: post #194
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.

I think talking about android games is moving the goalposts a bit. There's no market for Android games on windows either. On my end, and my Year of Linux Desktop started almost a decade ago, the Linux experience has not only never been better (of course) but has improved faster in recent years than ever before, and gaming is one of the fastest improving areas. Proton is a fantastic piece of software.

Not at all.

Android seems to only be Linux when bragging about how Linux has won, yet to point out that games on Android/Linux distribution don't get made available on GNU/Linux distribution, is moving goalposts.

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

#198

Post by blagie »

dragontamer wrote: post #130
blagie wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only... (1) There are a million different ROCm pages and introductions (2) Even that page is out-of-date, and e.g. claims unofficial support for "GFX8 GPUs: Polaris 11 chips, such as on the AMD Radeon RX 570 and Radeon Pro WX 4100," although those were randomly disabled after ROCm 3.5.1. ... if you have a Ph.D in AMD productology, you might be able to figure it out. If it's merely in computer science, math, or engine…

> Half-decent engineer time is worth $350/hour, all in (benefits, overhead, etc.). Once you've spent a week futzing with AMD's mess, you're behind by the cost of ten NVidia A4000 cards which Just Work. It seems pretty simple to me if we're talking about compute. The MI-cards are AMD's line of compute GPUs. Buy an MI-card if you want to use ROCm with full support. That's MI25, MI50, or MI100. > As a footnote, I suspec…

> It seems pretty simple to me if we're talking about compute. The MI-cards are AMD's line of compute GPUs. Buy an MI-card if you want to use ROCm with full support. That's MI25, MI50, or MI100.

For tasks which require that much GPU, I'm using cloud machines. My dev desktop would like a working GPU 24/7, but it doesn't need to be nearly that big.

If I had my druthers, I would have bought an NVidia 3050, since it has adequate compute, and will run once available I just did a web search. The only card from that series I can find for sale, new, was the MI100, which runs $13k. The MI50 doesn't exist, and the MI25 can only be bought used on eBay. Corporate won't do eBay. Even the MI100 would require an exception, since it's an unauthorized vendor (Amazon doesn't have it).

Combine that with poor software support, and an unknown EOL, and it's a pretty bad deal.

> I think you're right, but the #1 use of these devices is running video games (aka: DirectX and Vulkan). Compute capabilities are quite secondary at the moment.

Companies should maximize shareholder value. Right now:

- NVidia is building an insurmountable moat. I already bought an NVidia card, and our software already has CUDA dependencies. I started with ROCm. I dropped it. I'm building developer tools, and if they pick up, they'll carry a lot of people.

- It will be years before I'm interested in trying ROCm again. I was oversold, and AMD underdelivered.

- Broad adoption is limited by lack of standards and mature software.

It's fine to day compute capabilities are secondary right now, but I think that will limit AMD in the long term. And I think lack of standards is to NVidia's advantage right now, but it will hinder long-term adoption.

If I were NVidia, I'd make:

- A reference CUDA open-source implementation which makes CUDA coda 100% compatible with Xe and Radeon

- License it under GPL with a CLA, so any Intel and AMD enhancements are open and flow back

- Have nominal optimizations in the open-source reference implementation, while keeping the high-performance proprietary optimizations NVidia proprietary (and only for NVidia GPUs)

This would encourage broad adoption of GPGPU, since any code I wrote would work on any customer machine, Intel, AMD, or NVidia. On the other hand, it would create an unlevel playing field for NVidia, since as the copyright holder, only NVidia could have proprietary optimizations. HPC would go to NVidia, as would markets like video editing or CAD.

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

#199

Post by ineedasername »

pjmlp wrote: post #193
ineedasername wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the rate of increase though? Has it been linear, 0.05% per year? No: it has increased about 0.25% since 2019. It's not just that Linux is increasing, it's that it's rate of increase is also increasing.

For me that is wishful thinking that ignores increases in other platforms.

How is it wishful thinking? It's a proportional increase. Meaning that it has increased in both absolute and relative terms, and done so at a faster rate in the last two years. I'm stating an observation of the data. I don't see room for wishful thinking in that.

Other platforms can increase while Linux also increases, the two aren't mutually exclusive.

I'm not saying it's going to take over the market. It's a huge long shot it will ever really rival Windows. Even if makes significant headway on Steam, that also doesn't necessarily translate to a corresponding change in OS market share. But the pending arrival of the Steam Deck combined with an enormous increase in game compatibility has nonetheless set the stage for significant gains for Linux with Steam.

Which part of the above observations are wishful thinking?

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

#200

Post by Revenant-15 »

kyriakos wrote: post #190
Revenant-15 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've happily taken their advice and have moved to an Xbox Series S for a good 80% of my gaming needs. What gaming I still do on my PC consists mainly of older games, emulators and strategy games. Although I've been messing with Retroarch/Duckstation on my Xbox, and it's been quite novel and fun to be playing PS1 games on a Microsoft console.

Same here, I was looking to buy a GPU and for half the cost of a decent one (current market prices) I instead bought an Xbox Series X and a gamepass subscription. My gaming needs have been covered since February and gamepass keeps delivering while gpu prices are still too high for a no very serious gamer like myself.

The only game I've had to buy was Forza Motorsport 7, which is deeply discounted because it's leaving the service. Oh, and I couldn't resist Splinter Cell (the original Xbox version) and Beyond Good and Evil, which are also discounted to like 4 Euros. I might just end up buying the whole Splinter Cell series.

Otherwise, I have a list of 100 games installed that I'm slowly playing through that Game Pass has given me access to. Now today we're getting Humankind (on PC) and in two days Twelve Minutes. It's a ridiculously good deal.

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