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

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

#671

Post by red-iron-pine »

Havoc wrote: post #211

Who is the target audience for this? Well informed gamers know Intel's discrete GPU is hanging by a thread, so they're not hoping on that bandwagon. Too small for ML. The only people really happy seem to be the ones buying it for transcoding and I can't imagine there is a huge market of people going "I need to go buy a card for AV1 encoding".

something like 60% of the GPUs by volume on Steam are on the mid-to-low end. like a non-trivial number still running 750 Ti's. there are a lot of gamers, and most aren't well-off tech bros.

there is a niche for this, though it remains to be seen if it'll be profitable enough for a large org like Intel

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

#672

Post by ryanwwest »

Venn1 wrote: post #509

I’ll pick up a B580 to see how it works with Jellyfin transcoding, OBS streaming using AV1, and, with some luck, Davinci Resolve. Maybe a little Blender? Other exciting tests will include things like fan control, since that’s still an issue with Arc GPUs. Should make for a fun blog post.

Looking forward to it! Would appreciate if you post a link here when you do, I'm excited to see how B series compares to A series for media encoding/decoding (assuming Battlemage is the same across all gpus the same way Alchemist was).

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

#673

Post by semi-extrinsic »

dmonitor wrote: post #388
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still using a 50" 1080p (plasma!) television in my living room. It's close to 15 years old now. I've seen newer and bigger TVs many times at my friends house, but it's just not better enough that I can be bothered to upgrade.

Doesn't plasma have deep blacks and color reproduction similar to OLED? They're still very good displays, and being 15 years old means it probably pre-dates the SmartTV era.

Yes exactly, the color is really good and it's just a stupid monitor that has an old basic Chromecast and a Nintendo Switch plugged in.

It does have HDMI-CEC, so I haven't even used the remote control in several years.

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

#674

Post by Miraste »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #185
philistine wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm baffled that PC gamers have decided that 1440p is the endgame for graphics. When I look at a 27-inch 1440p display, I see pixel edges everywhere. It's right at the edge of losing the visibility of individual pixels, since I can't perceive them at 27-inch 2160p, but not quite there yet for desktop distances. Time marches on, and I become ever more separated from gaming PC enthusiasts.

I used to be in the '4k or bust' camp, but then I realized that I needed 1.5x scaling on a 27" display to have my UI at a comfy size. That put me right back at 1440p screen real estate and you had to deal with fractional scaling issues. Instead, I bought a good 27" 1440p monitor, and you know what? I am not the discerning connoisseur of pixels that I thought I was. Honestly, it's fine . I will hold out with this setu…

MacOS and Windows have very good fractional scaling now. Linux... still no, but it's better than the X days.

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

#675

Post by ryao »

Miraste wrote: post #674
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be in the '4k or bust' camp, but then I realized that I needed 1.5x scaling on a 27" display to have my UI at a comfy size. That put me right back at 1440p screen real estate and you had to deal with fractional scaling issues. Instead, I bought a good 27" 1440p monitor, and you know what? I am not the discerning connoisseur of pixels that I thought I was. Honestly, it's fine . I will hold out with this setu…

MacOS and Windows have very good fractional scaling now. Linux... still no, but it's better than the X days.

I find the scaling situation with KDE is better with the Xorg X11 server than it is with Wayland. Things like Zoom will properly be scaled for me with the former.

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

#676

Post by PittleyDunkin »

lm28469 wrote: post #387
PittleyDunkin wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ML is about hit another winter. I agree ML is about to hit (or has likely already hit) some serious constraints compared to breathless predictions of two years ago. I don't think there's anything equivalent to the AI winter on the horizon, though—LLMs even operated by people who have no clue how the underlying mechanism functions are still far more empowered than anything like the primitives of the 80s enabled.

> even operated by people who have no clue how the underlying mechanism functions are still far more empowered than anything like the primitives of the 80s enabled. I'm still not convinced about that. All the """studies""" show 30-60% boost in productivity but clearly this doesn't translate to anything meaningful in real life because no industry laid off 30-60% of their workforce and no industry progressed anywhere c…

> All the """studies""" show 30-60% boost in productivity

The services that provide serious productivity boosts aren't being heavily used or marketed yet. They:

1. Attempt to do narrow tasks with high proficiency. 2. Replace specific job titles. 3. Are high-value enough to be slower to engage in layoffs.

What I'm suggesting is not a fungible solution, but it is one that will be highly profitable and productive.

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

#677

Post by ryao »

blagie wrote: post #644
ryao wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD would be selling it at a loss. Given that HBM costs 3x the price of desktop DRAM and a 192GB kit costs $600 at Newegg, the memory alone would cost 90% of the price. The GPU die, PCB, power circuitry, etc likely costs more than $200 to make. This does not consider that the board of directors would crucify Lisa Su if she authorized the use of HBM on a consumer product while it is supply constrained and there is ent…

NVidia would be dramatically affected, just not overnight. If Intel or AMD sold a niche product with 48GB RAM even at a loss, but hit high-end consumer pricing, there would be a flood of people doing various AI work to buy it. The end result would be that parts of NVidia's moat would start draining rather quickly, and AMD / Intel would be in a stronger position for AI products. I use NVidia because when I bought AMD…

> If I could build a cheap system with around 200GB,

Even if AMD dropped the price to $2000, you could not be able to build a system with one of these cards. You cannot buy these cards at their current 5 digit pricing. The idea that you could buy it if they dropped the price to $2000 is a fantasy, since others would purchase the supply long before you have a chance to purchase one, just like they do now.

AMD is already selling out at the current 5 digit pricing and Nvidia is not affected, since Nvidia is selling millions of cards per year and still cannot meet demand while AMD is selling around 100,000. AMD dropping the price to $2000 would not harm Nvidia in the slightest. It would harm AMD by turning a significant money maker into a loss leader. It would also likely result in Lisa Su being fired.

By the way, the CUDA moat is overrated since people already implement support for alternatives. llama.cpp for example supports at least 3. PyTorch supports alternatives too. None of this harms Nvidia unless Nvidia stops innovating and that is unlikely to happen. A price drop to $2000 would not change this.

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

#678

Post by Miraste »

ryao wrote: post #675
Miraste wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacOS and Windows have very good fractional scaling now. Linux... still no, but it's better than the X days.

I find the scaling situation with KDE is better with the Xorg X11 server than it is with Wayland. Things like Zoom will properly be scaled for me with the former.

Are you using fractional scaling, or 2x?

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

#679

Post by zeendo »

whatudb wrote: post #63
treprinum wrote: post #26

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...

Meta comment: "why don't they just" phrase usually indicates significant ignorance about a subject, it's better to learn a little bit before dispensing criticism about beancounters or whatnot. In this case, the die I/O limits precludes more than a reasonable number of DDR channels.

Or literally "just" take the "just" out of the question and 90% of the time the tone becomes inquisitive instead of rhetorical.

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

#680

Post by ryao »

Miraste wrote: post #678
ryao wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the scaling situation with KDE is better with the Xorg X11 server than it is with Wayland. Things like Zoom will properly be scaled for me with the former.

Are you using fractional scaling, or 2x?

2x
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