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Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

phoronix.com

31–40 of 722 posts

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#31
post #22
post #18

> Intel with their Windows benchmarks are promoting the Arc B580 as being 24% faster than the Intel Arc A750 Not a huge fan of the numbering system they've used. B > A doesn't parse as easily as 5xxx > 4xxx to me.

They're going in alphabetical order: A - Alchemist B - Battlemage C - Celestial (Future gen) D - Druid (Future gen)

Yes, I understand that. I'm saying it doesn't read as easily IMO as (modern) NVIDIA/AMD model numbers. Most numbers I deal with are base-10, not base-36.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#32

Why don't they just release a basic GPU with 128GB RAM and eat NVidia's local generative AI lunch? The networking effect of all devs porting their LLMs etc. to that card would instantly put them as a major CUDA threat. But beancounters running the company would never get such an idea...

Judging by the number of 16 GB laptops I see around, 128 GB of RAM would probably cost a bajillion dollars

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#33

Why don't they just release a basic GPU with 128GB RAM and eat NVidia's local generative AI lunch? The networking effect of all devs porting their LLMs etc. to that card would instantly put them as a major CUDA threat. But beancounters running the company would never get such an idea...

Even 24 or 32 GB for an accessible price would sell out fast. NVIDIA wants $2000 for the 5090 to get 32.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#34

Why don't they just release a basic GPU with 128GB RAM and eat NVidia's local generative AI lunch? The networking effect of all devs porting their LLMs etc. to that card would instantly put them as a major CUDA threat. But beancounters running the company would never get such an idea...

Judging by the number of 16 GB laptops I see around, 128 GB of RAM would probably cost a bajillion dollars

One of the great things about having a desktop is being able to get that much for under $300 instead of the price of a second laptop.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#35
post #9

I put an a360 Card into an old machine I turned into a plex server. It turned it into a transcoding powerhouse. I can do multiple indepdent streams now without it skipping a beat. Price-performance ratio was off the chart

Any idea how that compares to Apple Silicon for that job? I bought the $599 MacBook Air with M1 as my plex server for this reason. Transcodes 4k HEVC and doesn’t even need a fan. Sips watts.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#36
post #17
post #9

I put an a360 Card into an old machine I turned into a plex server. It turned it into a transcoding powerhouse. I can do multiple indepdent streams now without it skipping a beat. Price-performance ratio was off the chart

Interesting application. Was this a machine lacking an iGPU, or does the Intel GPU-on-a-stick have more quicksync power than the iGPU?

A not inconsequential possibility is that both the iGPU and dGPU are sharing the transcoding workload, rather than the dGPU replacing the iGPU. It's a fairly forgotten feature of Intel Arc, but I don't blame anyone because the help articles are dusty to say the least.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#37
I wanted to have alternative choices than Nvidia for high power GPUs. Then the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to rent cloud services for AI/ML workloads and lesser powered ones for gaming. The only use cases I could come up with for wanting high-end cards are 4k gaming (a luxury I can't justify for infrequent use) or for PC VR which may still be valid if/when a decent OLED (or mini-OLED) headset is available--the Sony PSVR2 with PC adapter is pretty close. The Bigscreen Beyond is also a milestone/benchmark.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#38

I wanted to have alternative choices than Nvidia for high power GPUs. Then the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to rent cloud services for AI/ML workloads and lesser powered ones for gaming. The only use cases I could come up with for wanting high-end cards are 4k gaming (a luxury I can't justify for infrequent use) or for PC VR which may still be valid if/when a decent OLED (or mini-OLED) headset is a…

Which video card are you using for PSVR?

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#39

They say the best predictor for the future is the past. How was driver support for their A-series?

Drivers were very rough at launch. Some games didn't run at all, some basic functionality and configuration either crashes or failed to work, some things ran very poorly, etc. However, it was essentially all ironed out over many months of work.

They likely won't need to do the same discovery and fixing for B-series as they've already dealt with it.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#40
post #12
post #10

Unlabelled graphs are infuriating. Are the charts average framerate? Mean framerate? Maximum framerate?

The two graphs on the page show FPS.

GP is asking what measure of FPS. The most likely value when unspecified is usually "mean FPS" but, being a marketing graph, it doesn't explicitly say.
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