Intel ARC GPUs, Xe Architecture for dGPUs [2018-2022]

[eastmen]

AMD had to do a complete mgmt overhaul at Radeon and they brought some Zen people in to get where they are now, and where they'll be by EOY.

Intel has no such luxury, their CPU roadmap is also on fire in places most undesirable.

Again, good Xeons are better than bad dGPUs.
Plain and simple.


Obviously but Intel has a huge bowl of problems to solve and they're all kinda more important than being a 3rd GPU player.

AMD came off huge issues , zen was just a new product after the dumpster fire of bulldozer for a decade , vega was the ultimate end to gcn after what almost a decade or so there ? Intel is just starting out and we don't know if arc is just bad or this version with bad drivers is bad. Iterations down the line could be much better than what we have now. It's also my understanding that the next arch gpu is already pretty far into development so I would hope it would launch to better drivers and better performance

 

[Kaotik]

AMD came off huge issues , zen was just a new product after the dumpster fire of bulldozer for a decade , vega was the ultimate end to gcn after what almost a decade or so there ? Intel is just starting out and we don't know if arc is just bad or this version with bad drivers is bad. Iterations down the line could be much better than what we have now. It's also my understanding that the next arch gpu is already pretty far into development so I would hope it would launch to better drivers and better performance

CDNA is very much GCN-continuity

 

[Bondrewd]

AMD came off huge issues

Obviously but they had to undertake a massive cultural and leadership change which is highly unlikely in something as huge and old as Intel.

Honestly you should probably message some Intel folks in private to get a somewhat accurate understanding of Intel's cultural issues.

 

[swaaye]

Wasn't it culture that previously caused them to only minimally get into GPUs (as IGPs)? Did they just finally decide that NVidia is a threat?

 

[Bondrewd]

I was under the impression that culture was what previously caused them to only minimally get into GPUs (as IGPs)

Oh no, Intel Gen guys wanted to make bigger parts since like 2006.
It was the management that was holding them back, first by making Larrabee, then just by containing them to larger iGP configs.

Did they just finally decide that NVidia is a threat?

The management did.

 

[eastmen]

CDNA is very much GCN-continuity

Yes which shows that the arc line can be saved. You went from Vega to RDNA 1 to RDNA 2 . Not sure why people think that intel couldn't do the same.

Obviously but they had to undertake a massive cultural and leadership change which is highly unlikely in something as huge and old as Intel.

Honestly you should probably message some Intel folks in private to get a somewhat accurate understanding of Intel's cultural issues.

AMD just needed to change CPU and GPU designs. That takes time.

 

[DegustatoR]

Intel is dropping native support for DirectX 9 games in favor of DirectX 12 emulation

Microsoft will now take over DX9 bugs and optimizations.

www.theverge.com

 

[DavidGraham]

Not sure why people think that intel couldn't do the same.

Because of the link above? Intel just removed support for DX9 support and all of the previous DX APIs, and will rely on emulation to run these games, which means the worst performance, compatibility and bugs for these games, which number by the tens of thousands.

 

[Bondrewd]

AMD just needed to change CPU and GPU designs.

noooooo it wasn't that simple, not even close.
Zen and what you have in GPUs now are the result of a MASSIVE cultural and methodology shift.

 

[eastmen]

Because of the link above? Intel just removed support for DX9 support and all of the previous DX APIs, and will rely on emulation to run these games, which means the worst performance, compatibility and bugs for these games, which number by the tens of thousands.

We'd have to see how performance scales with emulation. Steam OS uses proton to emulate windows and dx and performance is pretty similar

noooooo it wasn't that simple, not even close.
Zen and what you have in GPUs now are the result of a MASSIVE cultural and methodology shift.

perhaps zen , but isn't rdna a continuation of gcn

 

[Bondrewd]

but isn't rdna a continuation of gcn

About as GCN as it gets, all up there in their ISA manual.

 

[arandomguy]

Because of the link above? Intel just removed support for DX9 support and all of the previous DX APIs, and will rely on emulation to run these games, which means the worst performance, compatibility and bugs for these games, which number by the tens of thousands.

I don't see that by itself inherently as a barrier to Intel moving forward. You can also argue a large contributor to AMD's relative success recently is also in large part to the growing relevance of DX12 and lowering relevance of older "legacy" APIs. Albeit some of the factors in play that benefit AMD in a more DX12 centric environment might not apply to Intel, but that is another issue.

If we want to take a step back Intel's current driver and software support issue is arguably basically a magnified situation of that of AMD against Nvidia, and no doubt they are starting much further behind. AMD has also historically fared less well against Nvidia in many of the same criteria such as software support, "legacy" or less popular API support (some would even be critical of their support of DX9 and DX11 when those API's were "modern"). It's also been mentioned that wider game test suites and "off game" test suites also end up tending to favor Nvidia as well, such as those that aren't in the top popular games and benchmarked games that Intel is supposedly targeting for optimization.

 

[techuse]

noooooo it wasn't that simple, not even close.
Zen and what you have in GPUs now are the result of a MASSIVE cultural and methodology shift.

Can you elaborate on these changes that happened within AMD?

 

[DegustatoR]

 

[digitalwanderer]

Eew, the bar is going pretty low.

 

[Esrever]

I can see someone like my cousins 28 year old who last seriously played skyrim and stardew valley and wants Starfield and is looking to update her 6 year old pc. Depending on its performance and how it costs and how easily it is to get vs nvidia or amds similarly price card this could be a great deal for her.

I wouldn't recommend anything with driver problems to someone who is pretty casual to PC gaming but thats just me. No matter how good the perf/$ is, its not worth the headache related to getting things to run well for someone who isn't well versed in dealing with driver issues.

Only people who I'd think would buy it as people who get duped by Intel's OEM bundled PCs or enthusiasts who want to poke at it as something of a novelty.

 

[digitalwanderer]

or enthusiasts who want to poke at it as something of a novelty.

See? They know my demographic, I'm gonna have to get one at some point just to know how troublesome they can or can't be.

 

[eastmen]

I wouldn't recommend anything with driver problems to someone who is pretty casual to PC gaming but thats just me. No matter how good the perf/$ is, its not worth the headache related to getting things to run well for someone who isn't well versed in dealing with driver issues.

Only people who I'd think would buy it as people who get duped by Intel's OEM bundled PCs or enthusiasts who want to poke at it as something of a novelty.

If its driver problems in terms of system stability in daily tasks then yea I agree. If its driver stability for a 20 year old game I don't agree so much.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

Intel Arc A380 Desktop Graphics Card Pre-Orders in USA start at 139 USD

Intel's Arc Alchemist A380 is currently up for pre-order in the United States, with ASRock's Challenger ITX variant listed on Newegg for $139.99 USD with an expected release date of August 22....

www.guru3d.com

 

[trinibwoy]

Grrrr of course it doesn’t have hdmi 2.1. Would’ve been an instant buy.