Intel ARC and the Latest Drivers: Does this bode Well for ARC's future?

[humbug]

I think Intel have made a great start with the A7xx cards, and it bodes well for the B series. Intel just need to stay the course. Like AMD with their Ryzen CPUs.



Granted that LTT seem to have a policy about trying to not be nasty about anything but I did not get the impression you did. Rather, in that video it was Luke who nailed it when he said that at some point he stopped thinking about it being an Intel Arc but rather just a GPU. And as a GPU these days the A770 seems to pretty much just work.

Even in Star Citizen.

I mean totally, to use an expression i would rather not because Jenson ruined it for everyone... If "it just works" then who cares who made it? I agree, its not quite that though is it? Even they, all be it in a very dismissive and jolly way listed quite a number of problems, clearly they did not "just forget about it" not when several of those games still had weird graphical glitches.

Having said that i do agree, its come a long way and i think its very usable, had they said that i think it would have been more honest.
Beyond that the price still matters, at £450 it was completely ridiculous, that's taking the pee even if it was perfect, at £350 its better, but still over priced.

Let me ask you this, whats the point in a third player if they are just going to do 'what even the worst' of the other two are already doing that we all agree is the problem?

 

[Author_25]

I'd bite at £250 for sure for a 16gb a770

Remeber the days when £250 to £350 would by you the top tier card.

 

[oweneades]

I got confused by the £450 price being touted so I had to check. I see Overclockers were charging a frankly ridiculous £450 for the non LE A770. No idea why as the LE model was £389 at launch and the non LE models are no faster in actual games (and IMO looks a lot nicer - even if I do want one of the BiFrost cards for my shelf of interesting tech items).

Saying that the pricing was too strong at launch. The 770 should have been around 750 pricing (£329) with the A750 being around the £279 mark. This would have made them more price competitive, especially against the 3060 and 6650XT whilst still allowing room for "premium models" to sit above.

I bought a A750 on launch to tinker with and test for myself (It now resides in my desktop pushing 3440x1440 where it is doing a surprisingly decent job). As I said then I would not recommend it for someone looking for the best bang for buck, although with continued driver improvements (overlay needs to die) and price drops they are worth a look.

 

[Yaayuh!]

Remeber the days when £250 to £350 would by you the top tier card.

Remember the days when Freddos were 10p.

 

[Quartz]

No idea why as the LE model was £389 at launch

ITYM £389.99 and it still is; the 8 GB Asus is £332.99. The 8 GB Intel A750 is £289.98.

 

[humbug]

I got confused by the £450 price being touted so I had to check. I see Overclockers were charging a frankly ridiculous £450 for the non LE A770. No idea why as the LE model was £389 at launch and the non LE models are no faster in actual games (and IMO looks a lot nicer - even if I do want one of the BiFrost cards for my shelf of interesting tech items).

Saying that the pricing was too strong at launch. The 770 should have been around 750 pricing (£329) with the A750 being around the £279 mark. This would have made them more price competitive, especially against the 3060 and 6650XT whilst still allowing room for "premium models" to sit above.

I bought a A750 on launch to tinker with and test for myself (It now resides in my desktop pushing 3440x1440 where it is doing a surprisingly decent job). As I said then I would not recommend it for someone looking for the best bang for buck, although with continued driver improvements (overlay needs to die) and price drops they are worth a look.

Its still over priced at £330. The RX 6650XT is £320 and better.

 

[Author_25]

Remember the days when Freddos were 10p.

And a packet of Space invaders was 15p.

 

[J.D]

So what is the ARC performance at currently (770)? I take it around 3060 levels? I had a look a while ago but I've not been keeping updated on the progression.

And a packet of Space invaders was 15p.

And "early access" didn't exist.

 

[Aretak]

So what is the ARC performance at currently (770)? I take it around 3060 levels? I had a look a while ago but I've not been keeping updated on the progression.

Still somewhat all over the place. It can be anything from almost-3070 to sub-2060, depending on the game. They recently implemented DXVK for dealing with older titles, and whilst it's a big improvement where it works, it's not a magic bullet. There are still a lot of compatibility and performance problems with older games. They have 25 years of driver hacks and optimisations to catch up on, so it's going to take a fair while.

 

[J.D]

Still somewhat all over the place. It can be anything from almost-3070 to sub-2060, depending on the game. They recently implemented DXVK for dealing with older titles, and whilst it's a big improvement where it works, it's not a magic bullet. There are still a lot of compatibility and performance problems with older games. They have 25 years of driver hacks and optimisations to catch up on, so it's going to take a fair while.

That's some good news at least but as you pointed out, much work still needing to be done. They should just sell it extremely cheap, even at a large loss to then keeping working on getting performance levels balanced. Well, that's if they are thinking of continuing wading into the murky GPU waters.

 

[HRL]

They are a step behind, but at present the RTX 5000 series is just a rumour and until Nvidia has cleared not just its, 3000 but 4000 stock, I doubt the 5000 series will be launched until 2025, if not later.

Possibly but Nvidia/AMD are pretty rigid with their two year cycles.

 

[Quartz]

So what is the ARC performance at currently (770)? I take it around 3060 levels?

If you restrict yourself to DX12 games then you're looking at about the same as a RTX 3060 Ti, maybe better. Do note that Arc performs relatively better at higher resolutions for some reason.

They should just sell it extremely cheap, even at a large loss to then keeping working on getting performance levels balanced.

I agree. If they sent out 10,000 cards to whoever it would cost them a few million which is small beer for a company of Intel's size.

 

[humbug]

If you restrict yourself to DX12 games then you're looking at about the same as a RTX 3060 Ti, maybe better. Do note that Arc performs relatively better at higher resolutions for some reason.



I agree. If they sent out 10,000 cards to whoever it would cost them a few million which is small beer for a company of Intel's size.

10,000 cards is absolutely nothing at all, Intel made 4 million of them thinking they would actually sell them for $450 a pop. The word deluded springs to mind.

If Intel have all this money, they don't, then lets see it, just sell them at a competitive price, its all anyone is asking.

 

[Author_25]

Possibly but Nvidia/AMD are pretty rigid with their two year cycles.

All depends on how much RTX 4000 and RX 7000 series stock is left, especially for Nvidia.

If prices do not drop they are going to have a lot of unused stock left doing nothing and no crypto miners to save them.

 

[loftie]

I think if they'd launched with a few teething issues, then since they've got no market share and no mind share when it comes to gaming GPUs, they should have priced it competitively. Since it seems that Ark looks very much like a beta product launched in testing, then IMO they should have fire saled the cards from the get go while being open about the fact that there may well be issues and they plan to work on it.

You've also got the added consideration that if Intel decide to cancel their GPUs because they CBA to stick it out, you're going to have a lot of GPUs that might not get the support they should do in terms of drivers. Now at the price point that would make it competitive, the people buying are either a) enthuisiasts with some spare cash who are curious or b) looking for a budget card, and if you're in group b would you really want to risk the money on it if you're not sure about future driver support? It has to be cheap enough so that group b doesn't mind going with it, and that's why I think they should have started off with a firesale.

It's good that they seem to be working hard to improve the drivers, and hopefully that bodes well for the future. Hopefully they do stick it out, mainly as I want some competition to return WRT prices, but in all honesty I suspect if Intel do manage to make it a triopoly I reckon we'll just end up with overpriced cards from 3 vendors instead of 2.

 

[J.D]

If you restrict yourself to DX12 games then you're looking at about the same as a RTX 3060 Ti, maybe better. Do note that Arc performs relatively better at higher resolutions for some reason.

Quite impressive as I didn't think they would be contending (in some titles) with this class of GPU or in some cases, the 3070.

I agree. If they sent out 10,000 cards to whoever it would cost them a few million which is small beer for a company of Intel's size.

Makes sense and gets more people talking about their product.

 

[humbug]

I think if they'd launched with a few teething issues, then since they've got no market share and no mind share when it comes to gaming GPUs, they should have priced it competitively. Since it seems that Ark looks very much like a beta product launched in testing, then IMO they should have fire saled the cards from the get go while being open about the fact that there may well be issues and they plan to work on it.

You've also got the added consideration that if Intel decide to cancel their GPUs because they CBA to stick it out, you're going to have a lot of GPUs that might not get the support they should do in terms of drivers. Now at the price point that would make it competitive, the people buying are either a) enthuisiasts with some spare cash who are curious or b) looking for a budget card, and if you're in group b would you really want to risk the money on it if you're not sure about future driver support? It has to be cheap enough so that group b doesn't mind going with it, and that's why I think they should have started off with a firesale.

It's good that they seem to be working hard to improve the drivers, and hopefully that bodes well for the future. Hopefully they do stick it out, mainly as I want some competition to return WRT prices, but in all honesty I suspect if Intel do manage to make it a triopoly I reckon we'll just end up with overpriced cards from 3 vendors instead of 2.

That's my whole problem with this, the problem with the duopoly is right, not that it is, its actually a monopoly but for arguments sake i agree we need another vendor, desperately.

But they came in, looking like they already have a chip on their shoulder with RTX 3060Ti money for an RX 6600 none XT card, oh and AMD, yeah they already don't exists, we are just sticking it to Nvidia, with more expensive cards and an attitude.

Hmm... nice try Intel, not what we are looking for, thanks tho, good bye...

 

[loftie]

@humbug Agreed, it seems like they've just decided that they can charge near enough the same because they're "nvidia" "Intel". Intel needed to make a splash - like dropping a blue whale into the ocean kinda splash. Instead they dropped a helium filled balloon and seem surprised by the result.

 

[humbug]

@humbug Agreed, it seems like they've just decided that they can charge near enough the same because they're "nvidia" "Intel". Intel needed to make a splash - like dropping a blue whale into the ocean kinda splash. Instead they dropped a helium filled balloon and seem surprised by the result.

Intel are so big a lot of their own marketing teams and advisers don't know what is going on, they don't realise they aren't this blue whale anymore, at least in monetary terms and mindshare, so they still act like they are.

Jon Peddie himself from Jon Peddie Research sat next to MLID and told him Intel will take AMD's GPU marketshare just because they are Intel, people will buy them in huge numbers just because its Intel. WHAT? completely and utterly deluded! And that's exactly how the various factions with in Intel who matter here thought.

How does that coffee smell now? Smells like poop doesn't it?

 

[Gerard]

Remeber the days when £250 to £350 would by you the top tier card.

Yup, now card pricing seems to be determined by how much cocaine the ceo's want to snort.