Intel Arc discrete GPU Q1 2022

Intel will definitely have the worst drivers for a while, I'm even more concerned about their memory controller. I'd heard rumors it was borked during development and seeing how the ARC cards need resizeable BAR to be able to function seems to confirm it.

I believe it's already fixed for the B series, I'm real curious to see the A770 benchmarks once the embargo lifts so we can see what the what is.
 
Intel Will Not Prohibit Gaming Arc GPU Use in Datacenters

Intel Will Not Prohibit Gaming Arc GPU Use in Datacenters

For business or pleasure.

The consumer Arc A7 mid-range GPU series for gaming were not designed for large-scale operations with multiple GPU instances running alongside each other. For this, Intel has a separate line of products called Data Center GPU Flex series, which are essentially the same cards except they don’t have physical display connectors and fans.

However, if there are still people who would rather buy Arc A7 GPUs for servers, that will be a non-issue according to Intel, who will grant license even for such a use. This means that Intel will have a similar software licensing model to AMD, but entirely different from NVIDIA.


Sources: VideoCardz.com, ServeTheHome
 
It's a shame there is no FP64 support on the Arc cards, makes them kind of useless for F@H and other OpenMM projects.
 
DarkFoss said:
It's a shame there is no FP64 support on the Arc cards, makes them kind of useless for F@H and other OpenMM projects.
Click to expand...

Hopefully the second generation will have that. Arc is a work in progress to be sure.
 
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Intel Arc A770 and A750 GPUs - Review Roundup

Intel Arc A770 and A750 GPUs - Review Roundup

With their new Arc line of GPUs, Intel is challenging what seems like an eternity of two-company dominance in the gaming graphics space. Before you run out and buy one, however, please do your research with some of these fine reviews from across the Web.

For those of you who might be confused about Intel’s nomenclature, the "Limited Edition" or "LE" graphics cards are the ones made by Intel themselves. These first-party cards will be available starting October 12. Third-party cards will be coming later.

Ars Technica

Digital Foundry (video review)

Digital Foundry (written review)

Engadget

Gamers Nexus (A770)

Hardware Unboxed

Hot Hardware

JayzTwoCents

KitGuru (A770)

KitGuru (A750)

Linus Tech Tips

PCMag (A770)

PC World

Phoronix

Techgage

TechPowerUp (A770)

TechPowerUp (A750)

The Verge

Tom’s Hardware (A770)

Tom’s Hardware (A750)
 
Intel Arc A770 Tested with PCIe 3.0 and Resizable BAR Off @ TechPowerUp

Intel Arc A770 Tested with PCIe 3.0 and Resizable BAR Off @ TechPowerUp

To BAR or not to BAR, that is the question.

PCI Resizable BAR is a novelty feature introduced by the PCI-SIG way back in 2007 alongside PCIe Gen 2, as sizes of graphics card dedicated memory were crossing the 1 GB-mark. The feature allowed the CPU to see all of the GPU's memory as a single addressable block, rather than through 256 MB apertures. Neither NVIDIA nor AMD bothered implementing it back then, and built several subsequent generations of PCIe GPUs using fixed BAR sizes of 256 MB, until AMD implemented resizable BAR for the PCIe root-complex of its "Zen 2" processors, and RDNA2 graphics architecture, rebranding it as "Smart Access Memory." It produced tangible single-digit percentage performance gains in games, and soon the feature caught up with NVIDIA drivers and cards. Intel's PCIe roots support resizable-BAR all the way back since 6th Gen "Skylake," and the feature has been added through BIOS updates to most 300-series chipset motherboards (and newer).

In this article, we show you if Intel is right in telling people without resizable-BAR not to buy its GPUs, and just how much of an impact the feature makes. The A770 features a PCI-Express 4.0 x16 host interface, which tempts us to test the card in PCIe Gen 3 mode, by making our test system's motherboard limit PEG to Gen 3 in the BIOS setup program. This is relevant, because there are processors with PCIe Gen 3 PEG and Resizable BAR, such as Intel 10th Gen Core "Comet Lake" and AMD Ryzen 7 5700G "Cezanne" APUs.


Click here to read the full article.
 
Not bad not bad.
Driver issues could be a deal breaker though, at least in the short term.

I had issues with an Intel GMA 5500 running Final Fantasy X, which would crash at completely random times and far too often.

Of course it could be just the laptop i ran it on just shared way too many resources for the game to deal with.... (reducing settings did help extend the time between crashes...but it still crashed too much) or the game itself was just a crap port (Square Enix PC ports are known to be terrible)

But then again you could run the game on AMD and nvidia cards and they'd go hours without crashing (if it did crash, it was far less often)

I wouldnt be against getting one of these if the price is right, but i dont want to be a beta driver tester. Although i never really experience severe driver problems myself, i've always owned AMD (all the way back with their Rage Pro chips) and been with them through their driver growth. Even if the drivers are raw, i'd hope that if i had an ARC product, any title I have runs relatively trouble free.
 
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