Intel Xe Kicks the Door Open to Challenge the GeForce-Radeon Duopoly

[btarunr]

Intel's discrete graphics card for PC enthusiasts is real. Intel won't just address the pro-graphics and accelerated-compute markets, but also consumer graphics, challenging the duopoly of NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon. Scheduled for 2020, the new Intel Xᵉ is a family of discrete GPUs targeting client-segment (consumer graphics) as well as enterprise (pro-graphics and compute).

As for performance, we speculate that the first Xᵉ products could span a vast lineup of ASICs starting single-digit TFLOP/s range for the client-segment GPU, looking purely at a nondescript performance-time graph presented by Intel. This graph depicts performance double linearly over time up to Gen9, and increase to Intel's own state 1 TFLOP/s for the Gen11 iGPU core in 2019 (a full four years following Gen9). There are a spectrum of GPUs going from the entry-level client-segment all the way up to mid-range and enthusiast segment (Intel finally used the E-word).



For the enterprise-segment GPU, however, we see a sharp rise in performance over Gen11, which could well be in the double-thru-triple digit TFLOP/s range. Intel is targeting the compute data-center market dominated by NVIDIA Tesla and AMD Radeon Instinct. This graph perfectly explains why Intel wants a discrete GPU now: it wants to go after the lucrative compute data-center segment, but wants to give the dividends of its R&D to gamers, too.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[StrayKAT]

At first I thought it was pro-oriented from earlier comments of theirs, but recently they announced they'll be supporting Linux gaming as well... which led me to think it's for gaming in general.

More power to them! We need more competitors. I might just fall into their camp myself.

Since I'm already eyeing a NUC, it'd be great to see it in one of those eventually.

 

[Vayra86]

They will have to be going into a LOT more detail than stating Teraflops for performance if they want to make an entrance.

We all know how well Tflops translate to performance between different architectures... (NOT). This tells us just about nothing. Still, nice to see the confirmation that they're pushing discrete GPU now. Never thought it'd come to this honestly, and a lot needs to happen before I trust Intel to provide a solid high end GPU...

 

[dj-electric]

I just hope RTG 2.0 could have funds RTG 1.0 couldn't to have nice competition.

 

[BakerMan1971]

I am mildly excited about this announcement, at least we get a three legged race.

 

[natr0n]

K version lets you overclock I've heard.

 

[opteron]

K version lets you overclock I've heard.

It's the X version for oc, K is for CPU.

 

[ArbitraryAffection]

I won't be buying their graphics cards but it should mean NVIDIA lowers their pricing (sorry but 20 series pricing is stupid) if Intel can compete.

Or.... Intel being intel, they follow NVIDIA's lead and set the pricing stupidly high, too. (they do with their CPUs so why not GPUs?) Shrug.

Either way I don't think im going to replace my Vega 64 any time soon

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

They will have to be going into a LOT more detail than stating Teraflops for performance if they want to make an entrance.

We all know how well Tflops translate to performance between different architectures... (NOT). This tells us just about nothing. Still, nice to see the confirmation that they're pushing discrete GPU now. Never thought it'd come to this honestly, and a lot needs to happen before I trust Intel to provide a solid high end GPU...

True, also people seam to be ignoring the fact only the Enterprise segment gpu has more than a few tflop potentially, so, total shit for gaming but brilliant for mining, or data mining is my prediction for gen11.

 

[craigo]

Larrabee?

https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/deja-moo.661730/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_(microarchitecture)

Why would anything good ever happen?

 

[Fleurious]

Another player in the discrete GPU market will be great.

 

[dj-electric]

Why would anything good ever happen?

You're right. Intel shouldn't have basically get some of the best people in the GPU industry and just give up on the whole idea. That will surely get us closer to fair GPU prices

 

[craigo]

You're right. Intel shouldn't have basically get some of the best people in the GPU industry and just give up on the whole idea. That will surely get us closer to fair GPU prices

I suppose, but I have no illusions that intel cares for consumer markets, larrabee turned into Knights Landing and had nothing to do with the consumer space.
this will no doubt turn into backend for your subscription cloud based gaming service so you can play the latest console ports on you nuc (there you go consumer) with your thin client os

 

[R0H1T]

There's a small possibility that Intel might throw a lot of Silicon behind this ambitious move & cross subsidize their entry into the dGPU space, ala Atom. If so they could match some of the mid range Nvidia GPUs & upper/mid range from AMD. Unlike CPUs you can throw a lot of "cores" into a GPU & they'll work just fine, assuming there isn't a major bottleneck somewhere.

 

[Bones]

Will they'll have crappy TIM on these too......... ?

 

[Deleted member 158293]

They got PowerPoint slides down perfectly.

The rest...

 

[Vayra86]

I suppose, but I have no illusions that intel cares for consumer markets, larrabee turned into Knights Landing and had nothing to do with the consumer space.
this will no doubt turn into backend for your subscription cloud based gaming service so you can play the latest console ports on you nuc (there you go consumer) with your thin client os

Painful as it is, that will certainly be part of their business plan.

 

[R0H1T]

Not unless they're buying a stake in Comcast/AT&T/Verizon or they're looking at an exclusive streaming service, only for Intel users. Why waste money on something like that when you can "upsell" GPUs probably at a much higher adoption rate as well?

 

[craigo]

Not unless they're buying a stake in Comcast/AT&T/Verizon or they're looking at an exclusive streaming service, only for Intel users. Why waste money on something like that when you can "upsell" GPUs probably at a much higher adoption rate as well?

What hardware do you suppose the providers you listed use to provide their services and who do you you think they buy it from?

 

[R0H1T]

What hardware do you suppose the providers you listed use to provide their services and who do you you think they buy it from?

You said something about NUC right, for (game) streaming? How big is the NUC market vs dGPU one, for that matter streaming services vs playing from a local disk? Besides there's other hurdles like data plan, broadband availability & so much more, that's before gaming via "Netflix" becomes affordable &/or popular.

I'm not sure what you're saying, please elaborate?

 

[EarthDog]

I am mildly excited about this announcement, at least we get a three legged race.

Even if one leg is as long as a kickstand...

 

[mtcn77]

As much as I hate to admit: there is literally '0' brand distinction in the marketplace when the developers design to be as brand-agnostic as possible in order to consolidate their userbase. Intel's aim may be specific towards this 'mainstream'. They did try to break pace using pixelsync and what not, but the key point is always agnosticism and sheer fps gallop of the gpu in question which they hadn't kind of established as of yet.

 

[phanbuey]

"kicks the door open"

LOL

 

[bug]

Hardware is nothing if they don't nail driver support.
And let's not kid ourselves, a three player market is no better than a two player one. We just get to be a bit more picky.

 

[neatfeatguy]

I can make some graphic charts where the line keeps going up, but it doesn't actually represent any true data points!

Quick! Intel! Put me on your marketing team. I'm going to lead you down the path that rocks!