Intel Unveils Arc Pro Graphics Cards for Workstations and Professional Software

[trsttte]

The thing about the business market is that is a product needs to work 100% of the time. Your paying more because of that. Given how poorly the Arc is for gaming, I wouldn't touch this if my revenue dependent on it.

You're missing a very important part, this is pretty much a display driver, intel sure knows how to do those. And it will need to work (and will be validated) with about 10 different programs that have much more consistent apis, not a thousand different ones each requiring different no longer maintained apis and different optimization tricks to work.

 

[efikkan]

You're missing a very important part, this is pretty much a display driver, intel sure knows how to do those. And it will need to work (and will be validated) with about 10 different programs that have much more consistent apis, not a thousand different ones each requiring different no longer maintained apis and different optimization tricks to work.

Precisely how do you think (GPU) APIs actually work?
It's not like there are custom GPU APIs per application, or that APIs are "optimized" based on which application is running. Whether it's DirectX, OpenGL, OpenCL, Vulkan or one of the video-related APIs, they all have a spec which defines how they behave.

Graphics APIs such as DirectX, OpenGL, and Vulkan have a lot of states in them, which makes them harder to validate than smaller APIs with a narrow scope. Yet Intel has managed better API conformity than AMD for years, not only in OpenGL, but also in Vulkan. Intel also have a more robust and stable display driver than AMD. The bugs which have been reported with the new Arc drivers are mostly related to new features and gimmicks, and their control panel, so it doesn't seem like the core driver is bad, at least it wasn't until the recent updates.

 

[Bomby569]

Professional market is easier, no driver or API's to cause trouble.

 

[efikkan]

Professional market is easier, no driver or API's to cause trouble.

What? Care to elaborate what you mean here?

 

[Ruru]

Professional market is easier, no driver or API's to cause trouble.

Pro drivers are hella more important than for consumer (gaming) cards. And I say this as a gamer.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Pro drivers are hella more important than for consumer (gaming) cards. And I say this as a gamer.

Yeah, as in pro/studio drivers don't have as many updates compared to game drivers, which for me, can screw up or outright break iray rendering. I see it all too often in the Daz3D forums where someone is using game drivers instead of studio drivers and after updating, they can no longer render and end up having to roll back their drivers.

 

[Ruru]

Yeah, as in pro/studio drivers don't have as many updates compared to game drivers, which for me, can screw up or outright break iray rendering. I see it all too often in the Daz3D forums where someone is using game drivers instead of studio drivers and after updating, they can no longer render and end up having to roll back their drivers.

And with pro drivers, stability is way more important.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

And with pro drivers, stability is way more important.

Yes, I use studio drivers for both cards(one for rendering, and the other for both gaming & rendering) in my system and haven't updated them at all since I got it. No driver problems. Although I have noted that sometimes certain games will crash due to the drivers, but nothing that would make me switch to game drivers yet.

*Forgot to mention, I mostly play World of Tanks, King's Bounty, and Divinity: Original Sin 2. If & when driver crashes occur, its with World of Tanks or any of the King's Bounty series. I haven't experienced any crashes with Divinity: OS2.

 

[Minus Infinity]

The only Flops in action here will be the drivers. I hadn't realised it was April 1 already!

 

[Crackong]

Why would someone want an unstable "professional" graphics card ?

 

[GreiverBlade]

I thought ARC was cancelled ? Oh yea, rumors are just rumors.

Battlemage (consumer) will be ... the rumors did not talk about Intel, releasing A380 only to china to cash it quick and release "Pro" SKUs (Arc Pro=/=Arc Alchemist/Battlemage)

we need a 3rd player for consumer ... imho, we will not get one this year ... (that's sad but not unexpected )

although in the "Pro" domain ... there are more than 2 player, iirc, Matrox is still around (and does not do consumer cards )

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

Pro drivers are hella more important than for consumer (gaming) cards. And I say this as a gamer.

One of the reasons intel IGPs clobber AMD and nvidia low end (radeon, geforce) for business is that the driver is more stable and has less updates. The device does what it needs to and shits all over AMD and nvidia for stability. It wins out in more than a few professional application type loads as well. This is also a reason intel still eats the server space alive. Their chipset and network adapter drivers are rock solid. Hell there are people that used intel quick sync over other solutions for video for a long time and will only buy intel because of it.

The king of pro cards is the quadro. It's partly drivers that do it, but it's also that it's just certified for more applications. You have situations where AMD is the better raw compute card but if you are in say Autodesk or Solidworks the quadro is going to spank it silly.

In the consumer market you can see gaming benchmarks and while there are outliers for the most part you have a good idea where on the performance tier you are going to be and then cross fingers and pray this gets better through drivers. In the pro market this is not true at all. You pick the purpose you are going for and the application(s) you are going to be using and then buy accordingly. Software companies usually target the best hardware as the cost of this software is $$$$$. It will not get better.

One of the keys to the apple M1 taking off the way it did was while it's not ideal at all for gaming graphics for the types of workloads it's focusing on it's very very very good, and then companies went out and optomized around it.

I'd expect intel will do much better in the pro market than the consumer market. If the compute is at all remotely good and the decoder is good companies will tweak for it. I highly suspect that intel intends these type of units to be smashed into boxes that are like their high end pro series NUCs that either sit headless on someones desk for compute type work or do video type stuff. It's not meant to compete with someone running a fatter socket xeon with gobs of RAM and a quadro smashing solidworks.

Battlemage (consumer) will be ... the rumors did not talk about Intel, releasing A380 only to china to cash it quick and release "Pro" SKUs (Arc Pro=/=Arc Alchemist/Battlemage)

we need a 3rd player for consumer ... imho, we will not get one this year ... (that's sad but not unexpected )

although in the "Pro" domain ... there are more than 2 player, iirc, Matrox is still around (and does not do consumer cards )

VIA tried in the consumer market and got crushed. The pro market is different. Cards go up for specific tasks. Gaming is just "plays games".

 

[Ruru]

One of the reasons intel IGPs clobber AMD and nvidia low end (radeon, geforce) for business is that the driver is more stable and has less updates. The device does what it needs to and shits all over AMD and nvidia for stability. It wins out in more than a few professional application type loads as well. This is also a reason intel still eats the server space alive. Their chipset and network adapter drivers are rock solid. Hell there are people that used intel quick sync over other solutions for video for a long time and will only buy intel because of it.

The king of pro cards is the quadro. It's partly drivers that do it, but it's also that it's just certified for more applications. You have situations where AMD is the better raw compute card but if you are in say Autodesk or Solidworks the quadro is going to spank it silly.

In the consumer market you can see gaming benchmarks and while there are outliers for the most part you have a good idea where on the performance tier you are going to be and then cross fingers and pray this gets better through drivers. In the pro market this is not true at all. You pick the purpose you are going for and the application(s) you are going to be using and then buy accordingly. Software companies usually target the best hardware as the cost of this software is $$$$$. It will not get better.

One of the keys to the apple M1 taking off the way it did was while it's not ideal at all for gaming graphics for the types of workloads it's focusing on it's very very very good, and then companies went out and optomized around it.

I'd expect intel will do much better in the pro market than the consumer market. If the compute is at all remotely good and the decoder is good companies will tweak for it. I highly suspect that intel intends these type of units to be smashed into boxes that are like their high end pro series NUCs that either sit headless on someones desk for compute type work or do video type stuff. It's not meant to compete with someone running a fatter socket xeon with gobs of RAM and a quadro smashing solidworks.



VIA tried in the consumer market and got crushed. The pro market is different. Cards go up for specific tasks. Gaming is just "plays games".

On the other hand, their Arc cards are for gaming market and their drivers suck balls, they have a lot of work to do to get the max out of their Arc GPU hardware.

And yeah, VIA.... I'm going to die laughing if I'll give my honest opinion of their sub-par iGPUs.

 

[stimpy88]

When you buy one of these, do you get a voucher to download a driver that works by Christmas or your money back?

 

[Ruru]

When you buy one of these, do you get a voucher to download a driver that works by Christmas or your money back?

That's the curse of an early adopter..

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

On the other hand, their Arc cards are for gaming market and their drivers suck balls, they have a lot of work to do to get the max out of their Arc GPU hardware.

And yeah, VIA.... I'm going to die laughing if I'll give my honest opinion of their sub-par iGPUs.

VIA made dedicated AGP and PIC-E cards as well. To the point of shitty DX 10 cards and opened a dedicated gaming house for a girls only gaming team for Quake 4. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/via-o...orts-training-house-for-competitive-pc-gaming laughable I know but the thing is the AMD and nvidia situation is largely by those companies doing. Others have taken a stab at it and until Microsofts dipshit ass xbox nobody wanted nvidia or ati crap in consoles.

Sitting around high fiving over master race, graphics, and other nonsense is how we all got stuck with two companies.

 

[Ruru]

VIA made dedicated AGP and PIC-E cards as well. To the point of shitty DX 10 cards and opened a dedicated gaming house for a girls only gaming team for Quake 4. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/via-o...orts-training-house-for-competitive-pc-gaming laughable I know but the thing is the AMD and nvidia situation is largely by those companies doing. Others have taken a stab at it and until Microsofts dipshit ass xbox nobody wanted nvidia or ati crap in consoles.

Sitting around high fiving over master race, graphics, and other nonsense is how we all got stuck with two companies.

I'll admit that back then, I couldnt even imagine girls playing anything else than Sims (or Singstar or something on a console), how times have changed.. Well, VIA was always the underdog though they made pretty solid chipsets in the late 90s/early 2000s (I remember you, KT133A <), but their graphics portion, just meh... I remember that their graphics department went to S3, and their discrete Chrome cards.... well, maybe in modern times, GT 710 wasn't the worst entry level card after all.

But after all, my point is mostly that I hope that Intel brings some competition on the GPU market. For a true budget gamer who buys the cheapest Ryzen or Intel's F SKU, a capable low-end card is welcome for them. GT 1030 was initally somewhat a good product, and IMO it was the last (de facto) low-end card which was usable in a budget gamer's setup. (Not the DDR4 scam version, we should totally forget that it even exists)

 

[BlaezaLite]

I entered the pc world with a 710 and then 1030. They both let me play Forza Horizon 4 and I thought it looked pretty decent on them! Then I got an RX470 and was like"WOW!"

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

I'll admit that back then, I couldnt even imagine girls playing anything else than Sims (or Singstar or something on a console), how times have changed.. Well, VIA was always the underdog though they made pretty solid chipsets in the late 90s/early 2000s (I remember you, KT133A <), but their graphics portion, just meh... I remember that their graphics department went to S3, and their discrete Chrome cards.... well, maybe in modern times, GT 710 wasn't the worst entry level card after all.

But after all, my point is mostly that I hope that Intel brings some competition on the GPU market. For a true budget gamer who buys the cheapest Ryzen or Intel's F SKU, a capable low-end card is welcome for them. GT 1030 was initally somewhat a good product, and IMO it was the last (de facto) low-end card which was usable in a budget gamer's setup. (Not the DDR4 scam version, we should totally forget that it even exists)

Yeah VIA has always had issues, same as the old SIS.

For what it's worth their gurlz of destruction gamer house didn't do very well in Quake 4. The whole thing was dumb. First, VIAs GPU was between an 8500gt and a 9400gt despite costing more and being less power efficient... none of the three could run Quake 4 at the needed FPS for competition. Next, Quake 4, well... it sucked. It ran like shit, played like shit, and it wasn't until a ton of modding that it was "good". The house was obviously as cash in on sex appeal and while the "gurlz" (why do that, just girls, or gals, who does this shit?) were good on the womens circuit the goal was to place them on the boys circuit. This resulted in a parade of fail and bad. Not only could the gurlz not compete on any real level the guys paid to train with them all of a sudden got crushed after by other guys they could beat. Que finger pointing. Was it the events, was it VIA, was it sexism, was it lack of training and mostly branding, was it just that the guys circuit inantely had more top talented players, was it that Quake 4 sucked? Or was it just that not a damn person involved in this thought a damn thing through beyond $$$$$. I'm going with the last. I've been involved in similar fiascos even in running gaming stuff where it all blew up into a glorious mess.

The funniest part is that this took out VIAs dreams of being a graphics card company. Maybe they should have put anime porn stickers on the graphics cards? Seems to work in Asian markets. Or I dunno rip off ASUS and just Gundam that shit up.

Back to the main topic. The issue is we are all going integrated SOCs sooner or later. The steam deck but scaled up or down is the future.

 

[Ruru]

Yeah VIA has always had issues, same as the old SIS.

For what it's worth their gurlz of destruction gamer house didn't do very well in Quake 4. The whole thing was dumb. First, VIAs GPU was between an 8500gt and a 9400gt despite costing more and being less power efficient... none of the three could run Quake 4 at the needed FPS for competition. Next, Quake 4, well... it sucked. It ran like shit, played like shit, and it wasn't until a ton of modding that it was "good". The house was obviously as cash in on sex appeal and while the "gurlz" (why do that, just girls, or gals, who does this shit?) were good on the womens circuit the goal was to place them on the boys circuit. This resulted in a parade of fail and bad. Not only could the gurlz not compete on any real level the guys paid to train with them all of a sudden got crushed after by other guys they could beat. Que finger pointing. Was it the events, was it VIA, was it sexism, was it lack of training and mostly branding, was it just that the guys circuit inantely had more top talented players, was it that Quake 4 sucked? Or was it just that not a damn person involved in this thought a damn thing through beyond $$$$$. I'm going with the last. I've been involved in similar fiascos even in running gaming stuff where it all blew up into a glorious mess.

The funniest part is that this took out VIAs dreams of being a graphics card company. Maybe they should have put anime porn stickers on the graphics cards? Seems to work in Asian markets. Or I dunno rip off ASUS and just Gundam that shit up.

Back to the main topic. The issue is we are all going integrated SOCs sooner or later. The steam deck but scaled up or down is the future.

VIA was just trying to take a too big slice of the cake, they were uncapable to eat it. And unironically I miss those anime'ish chicks on boxes and cooler art

But yeah, it already sucks that when you buy a laptop, you're stuck with its GPU, unless you have tools and rework skills. And when there's this climate bullshit going on, I think the opposite would be better to minimaze waste AKA let the users clean, maintenance and upgrade their laptops if they want. But no, it's the exact opposite.

 

[Jimmy_]

Not sure, if the driver will be on point as the specs on paper are! Or they'll mess up again with the drivers and dump the pro lineup too
Not sure how the Graphics card line-up will take intel? up the hills or down the valley

 

[efikkan]

Not sure, if the driver will be on point as the specs on paper are! Or they'll mess up again with the drivers and dump the pro lineup too

What else did they dump?

In many professional applications like AutoCAD, Solidworks, Maya, Premiere, Photoshop, various simulation tools, etc. these cards may actually perform pretty well. Combined with good video encoding, these might end up as popular products in certain segments.

 

[Jimmy_]

What else did they dump?

In many professional applications like AutoCAD, Solidworks, Maya, Premiere, Photoshop, various simulation tools, etc. these cards may actually perform pretty well. Combined with good video encoding, these might end up as popular products in certain segments.

there was a rumour that they were going to drop the ARC mainstream cards - rumour

yes, I totally agree with your point that it can come up as a popular product unless they don't mess up the drivers