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

[Freddie1980]

Is ARC Battlemage the card to wait for?

Intel's Next-Gen Arc Battlemage GPUs Are "Substantially Better" Than Where Alchemist Was In Its Current Stage

The bulk of Intel AXG is already working on the next-gen Arc Battlemage GPUs which are said to be substantially better than Alchemist.

wccftech.com

Hard to say with Raja at the helm. Battlemage is supposed to target the high end but Raja hasn't produced a top end GPU since the 9700XT and history isn't exactly on his side from his time at AMD.

On the other hand Intel are the card choice for people looking to experience entry level enthusiast PC gaming. Intel could make this level their bread and butter combined with move to using their own manufacturing it would give them a price advantage to boot (assuming Intel's foundries were as capable as TSMC's) and stay competitive.

 

[Angilion]

Hard to say with Raja at the helm. Battlemage is supposed to target the high end but Raja hasn't produced a top end GPU since the 9700XT and history isn't exactly on his side from his time at AMD.

On the other hand Intel are the card choice for people looking to experience entry level enthusiast PC gaming. Intel could make this level their bread and butter combined with move to using their own manufacturing it would give them a price advantage to boot (assuming Intel's foundries were as capable as TSMC's) and stay competitive.

Intel made a bit of a mess with the release of Alchemist, most notably by not having properly functional drivers and other software. They should have learned from that and do better with Battlemage. The guts of the claim of "substantially better" in the article referred to is about bugs in the hardware during development, which isn't clear from the title. "better" usually refers to performance in graphics cards. Not that it would matter in this case, because of course the next generation should have substantially better performance. What would be the point otherwise? If the performance was about the same there'd be no reason to bother with a new generation (either making it or buying it).

I doubt if Battlemage will be top end kit. As you say, Raja doesn't have the best track record for that. Also, it would only be Intel's second real attempt at a GPU and graphics card and graphics drivers. But I do think it might well be solid midrange/mid-high.

 

[Author_25]

Hard to say with Raja at the helm. Battlemage is supposed to target the high end but Raja hasn't produced a top end GPU since the 9700XT and history isn't exactly on his side from his time at AMD.

On the other hand Intel are the card choice for people looking to experience entry level enthusiast PC gaming. Intel could make this level their bread and butter combined with move to using their own manufacturing it would give them a price advantage to boot (assuming Intel's foundries were as capable as TSMC's) and stay competitive.

If it lives up to the, very early leaks, and has close to 4080 or just the 4070, with a better memory bus and more memory, at a lower price then Intel could make a dent in the mid range.

If Intel can under cut Nvidia and AMD, which is not impossible, once there new foundries come online, taking out a middle man, that there competiros cannot do at present, and continue with its current level of Driver improvement then Nvidia and AMD have something to worry about, after all it takes just one mistake to loose market share, something intel are familiar with, and seem to be learning from.

 

[oweneades]

What I would love to see from Battlemage is Intel to skewer both Nvidia and AMD in the mid - mid/high end.

Essentially release something around the 3090/4070Ti performance tier (so +40-50% over A770) with good efficiency at the ~£400-500 mark. Might be a pipe dream of course but that sort of approach could see Intel carve up a nice slice of Market Share whilst also garnering goodwill from the general gaming community (following on from a general positive approach seen with the A series cards since launch).

 

[Author_25]

Intel ARC A770 16GB can be found for £369.99,

 

[monkentage]

Would these cards work on an old Asus z170a? The last bios update was in 2018.

 

[oweneades]

It should work but without ReBAR support I wouldn't bother (not sure if Z170 has that). Intel A7xx needs ReBAR to perform properly.

 

[Purgatory]

Intel is also preparing Video Super Resolution for Chrome browsers - VideoCardz.com

Intel Video Super Resolution The Super Resolution tech not just for GeForce RTX graphics. Intel is also working on their own super resolution tech for video in Chromium browsers. We have already seen traces of such technology being referenced by Intel engineers for Chromium development, but it...

videocardz.com

 

[RavenXXX2]

Give it a year or two and I can see Intel overtaking AMD as the major competition to Ngreedia.

 

[humbug]

Give it a year or two and I can see Intel overtaking AMD as the major competition to Ngreedia.

There wont be any Desktop Intel GPU's in a year or two.

 

[Hewligan]

There wont be any Desktop Intel GPU's in a year or two.

Bah-Humbug

 

[humbug]

Bah-Humbug

 

[StephenJ]

There wont be any Desktop Intel GPU's in a year or two.

Would this be due to the rumor that intel are going to cancel the discrete graphics division ?

 

[humbug]

Would this be due to the rumor that intel are going to cancel the discrete graphics division ?

Raja Koduri has already been demoted, he's no longer in charge of AXG, which i think is a good thing, i said right from the start hiring him was a bad idea, Vega was crap, ARC is a copy of Vega.

I don't know who if any one has replaced him, they haven't said, which isn't a good look for the long term prospects of high end graphics, i think AXG will continue, they need server GPU's, i think ARC may continue as #060 class laptop GPU's, at least for a while.

The A770 is more expensive than the 6650XT and still quite a bit slower, the A750 fares much better. Intel are already loosing money on all of them, because the BOM costs are very much higher, they are supposed to be very much higher end cards, but they don't work, like Vega.

Intel could spend $4 Billion more trying again with someone who knows what they are doing, who is that? They haven't employed anyone to replace Raja, or they can keep trying to fix them and make them laptop GPU's where they can charge very much more for them, discrete Desktop GPU's the competition is far too fearce and contrary to what Intel assumed AMD are actually very good at what they do, Intel underestimated AMD, not for the first time.

So, these tech journalists make my head hurt, for decades they have been over promoting Nvidia, its why we are where we are, now they see Intel as the solution to this Nvidia problem, so they have switched to over promoting Intel and while doing it (lol) making AMD look good, because for as much as Intel would like them to they can't ignore AMD and with that make GPU's like the RX 6650XT look really really good.

I mean FFS the video above, they tested all of Intel's claims with the new drivers and found almost all of them to not be true, while cheerily glossing over that the RX 6650XT still stands out wildly as the significantly faster card at the significantly lower price, blowing not just the RTX 3060 out of the water but the A770 too.

 

[Quartz]

The Intel Arc cards are a very good start and need to be viewed in that vein. I hope Intel's senior management do.

 

[david25]

Have the newer drivers improved the very high idle power usage that was seen when the first reviews were released?

 

[oweneades]

Can always tell when a cherry picked example has been used for the narrative of a whole response. The 12 game average shows the actual positions of the cards and it doesn’t translate to the A770 being significantly slower than the 6650xt (well unless being slower at 1440p now means being faster?). Better value at current retail is certainly something that can be claimed depending on the title being played, that is fair enough, as is being the better option if the games you play perform better on the AMD hardware, at least right now.

 

[humbug]

Can always tell when a cherry picked example has been used for the narrative of a whole response. The 12 game average shows the actual positions of the cards and it doesn’t translate to the A770 being significantly slower than the 6650xt (well unless being slower at 1440p now means being faster?). Better value at current retail is certainly something that can be claimed depending on the title being played, that is fair enough, as is being the better option if the games you play perform better on the AMD hardware, at least right now.

The A770 is currently £360, the RX 6650XT £310.

The driver still has problems, i still think £250 would be a good price for it.

We want Intel in this game to bring prices down. Right? Not to be another Nvidia pulling prices up. Even the 3060 is cheaper ffs.... The A770 is the most expensive GPU in its class. Try and convince me that's as it should be.

 

[oweneades]

A770 (Phantom OC model) can be had for £330 so that brings it closer to the 6650xt.

I don't disagree that the A770 could do with another price drop, mainly down to the slightly slower A750 being £250. Maybe a drop to ~£299 whereby it can sit alongside the 6650XT which it surrounds when it comes to overall performance.

Hopefully the driver improvements will continue (main focus so far has been on DX9 with more minor increases for DX11/12).

 

[humbug]

A770 (Phantom OC model) can be had for £330 so that brings it closer to the 6650xt.

I don't disagree that the A770 could do with another price drop, mainly down to the slightly slower A750 being £250. Maybe a drop to ~£299 whereby it can sit alongside the 6650XT which it surrounds when it comes to overall performance.

Hopefully the driver improvements will continue (main focus so far has been on DX9 with more minor increases for DX11/12).

I'm comparing apples to apples pricing here. A quick google gives me an RX 6650XT for less than you're suggesting the A770 should be.
I''d like to stick to OCUK because if you can find one card cheaper else where the chances are you can find the other cheaper too, as i have, and then we are taking a risk of falling foul of OCUK rules.

£300 is still too expensive, if we are going to say Intel can be priced similarly to Nvidia then why can't AMD? Every one says they want competition but when it actually comes down to it some people, including these tech journalists having learned absolutely nothing at all seem more interested in elevating another Nvidia.

£250.