Resizable-BAR a Must for Arc "Alchemist," Stick with Other Vendors if you Lack it: Intel

[btarunr]

The PCI resizable-BAR feature is an absolute must for Intel Arc "Alchemist" graphics cards to perform as advertised, to the extent that Intel recommends sticking to "other vendors" (NVIDIA, AMD), for those on machines that lack resizable-BAR or prefer it disabled. In our testing of the Arc A380, we found a big performance gap between resizable-BAR being enabled and disabled. The company said that while it is working on driver optimizations that improve performance for machines lacking resizable-BAR, its general advice for those on older platforms is to stick with other vendors.

Resizable-BAR enables the software to see the entire video memory of a graphics card as a single large addressable block, rather than through 256 MB apertures. AMD and NVIDIA's driver architectures have optimized their memory-management to cope with these apertures through the advent of PCI-Express, but Intel Arc hasn't. Its memory-management model relies on large bursts of memory transfers, for which it needs resizable-BAR. The performance penalty for lacking it could be as high as 40 percent. In related news, Intel Graphics confirmed that the Arc A770 will be available both in 16 GB and 8 GB memory variants at launch—which is still slated for Soonuary, 2022.



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[Dr. Dro]

Yeah, I assume this will be a tricky one for Intel to fix. BAR optimization can introduce so many obscure bugs. It's no big deal with newer hardware, but a GPU like the A380 is definitely something I would use on an older machine which will not support this feature.

 

[watzupken]

I don't know if this is a good or bad thing. ReBar is meant to improve performance in games, but as we can see, some games actually regressed in performance with ReBar enabled. It seems like Intel simply made a forward looking card where there is no DX 9 native support and also not for systems that don't support ReBar. I wonder what other limitations there are with the ARC series.

 

[ModEl4]

So from my understanding, I see the below:

ARC A770/A750 announcement and launch will be within September.
ARC LE edition will be in stock clocks, so no overclocking implemented and the availability intent is to be limited so the partners (that decided to work with Intel) can take the majority of the sales (probably a little bit later it doesn't seem to be concurrent availability for partner models and LE cards and the number of partners is limited despite Intel's efforts to reach and work with all of them)
There will not be a A5X0 announcement at the launch event and the 5 series will be based on a different die ACM-G12 that it may come on a later date (it doesn't exclude a limited ACM-G10 batch), so essentially not just a cut-down ACM-G10 like many sites were saying and probably not A580 but A570 or A550 (my guess, they may have scraped A580).
No 8GB A770 from Intel directly only from partners and the 16GB model's price is going to be aggressive so it doesn't seem to make sense a 8GB one because possibly the difference they are giving the 16GB one from the 8GB one, is essentially their cost difference regarding memory.
They are working with MS and Nvidia to try to standardize AI based upscaling in a similar way with what DXR did to raytracing.
They are in talks with MS and MS with the other parties involved but can't agree on a single codec regarding Direct Storage GPU compression (so maybe why the delay)
Promised roughly per month major driver updates but it seems it won't be the case, probably on average per 1.5X month based on his reaction to AMD's update schedule and wording of his answer.

 

[Crackong]

Translation:

 

[ModEl4]

Regarding performance if ARC A770 and A750 has the same frequency and memory (let's say 2.4GHz actual clocks and 16Gbps memory) it should give in the below QHD chart at least around 290 (A770) and 263.5 (A750) so in this case (2.4GHz etc) A770 around -13% from 3060Ti.
If I would dare a pricing prediction it would be $349 SRP for A770 16GB and $279 SRP for A750

 

[claylomax]

"which is still slated for Soonuary, 2022."

What?

 

[ratirt]

Something tells me it is not just drivers that suck here. The drivers are bad for sure but maybe this Arch is just really bad product. If Intel wishes to stay in the dGPU market they really need to buckle up and refine the architecture and make some improvements while they work on the drivers.

 

[ZetZet]

"which is still slated for Soonuary, 2022."

What?

soon (tm)

 

[DrCR]

I’m super cheering on Intel’s GPU endeavours. But I won’t be buying one anytime soon either.

 

[ZoneDymo]

I think its pretty cool of Intel to make a statement like this, its open and transparant as they said they were aiming to be.

 

[AusWolf]

Soonuary... this made me laugh!

Better than Maybember, I guess.

 

[pavle]

We shall.

 

[uftfa]

I think this is pretty fair. We've already had 2 generations on PCs that support Resizeable BAR. PCs (and games) that don't make use of the feature will only decline from here on out. I see no issue in using Re-BAR as the sole design target.

Now, if only the driver optimization could just be at a level that competes with AMD (nevermind nvidia for now), that would be great.

 

[1d10t]

Intel are new player here and already give a middle finger to legacy platform.

 

[Imouto]

The fact that they hired Ryan Shrout back in the day was telling volumes about the management at Intel. Him still working there is the confirmation that Intel won't make it any time soon.

 

[watzupken]

Something tells me it is not just drivers that suck here. The drivers are bad for sure but maybe this Arch is just really bad product. If Intel wishes to stay in the dGPU market they really need to buckle up and refine the architecture and make some improvements while they work on the drivers.

I don't believe it is a bad product. The limitations with the hardware could boil down to the decisions they made to may be speed up development/ cut cost. For example, the hardware cannot run DX9 natively and the need for ReBar to run well, both are actually not deal breakers. DX9 can run on emulation, and I believe should still perform well since DX9 titles generally won't stress modern GPUs much. And for ReBar requirements, I think like systems that one purchased like 5 years back should be able to enable ReBar. I believe Intel enabled it for some older chipsets., though I am not sure about AMD. I know my B550 board supports ReBar via a BIOS update, just that I am not sure how far back did AMD enable this feature.
Having said that, the biggest problem that will result in the failure of the first gen ARC GPU is the timing. We are now at the last month of Q3 2022, and the product is not even available in store. With Nvidia likely to kick off the next gen GPU announcement soon, whatever excitement with the ARC GPU will fade away very quickly, if there is any excitement at all now.

 

[ratirt]

I don't believe it is a bad product. The limitations with the hardware could boil down to the decisions they made to may be speed up development/ cut cost. For example, the hardware cannot run DX9 natively and the need for ReBar to run well, both are actually not deal breakers. DX9 can run on emulation, and I believe should still perform well since DX9 titles generally won't stress modern GPUs much. And for ReBar requirements, I think like systems that one purchased like 5 years back should be able to enable ReBar. I believe Intel enabled it for some older chipsets., though I am not sure about AMD. I know my B550 board supports ReBar via a BIOS update, just that I am not sure how far back did AMD enable this feature.
Having said that, the biggest problem that will result in the failure of the first gen ARC GPU is the timing. We are now at the last month of Q3 2022, and the product is not even available in store. With Nvidia likely to kick off the next gen GPU announcement soon, whatever excitement with the ARC GPU will fade away very quickly, if there is any excitement at all now.

If you think about it, decision making is what makes the product bad in the end. To be fair, every product has some sort of potential and I'm sure Intel's Arch has a potential but as for today it is a bad product for what it is and what it has shown so far. Product as a whole with drivers and features and performance is not a good product. Just because it somewhat works you can't say it is good.
About the Rebar. Just because Intel enabled it for older graphics (Intel does not have a lot except the iGPU) it literally doesn't change a thing.
NV and AMD is so far ahead of Intel that this cannot even be any sort of dispute. I don't think timing has a major role here. Intel's GPU is competing with AMD and NV because they make graphics as well but the product does not compete in any of these: performance, features, reliability etc. People will compare Intels to other graphics vendors but the comparison is pointless. It has to be released and it is but it is a poor gpu to be fair. Kudos for trying but Intel you need to put even more effort since you are in the worse position and you don;t have an upper hand.
Rumor mill says that Intel is dropping the battlemage or whatever the next GPU is? That also says something.

 

[Dirt Chip]

A handicap at start, will be worthwhile in the future when BAR is a standard like AC in cars.

And as always- don't buy 'Alchemist'. Wait for reviews on 'battelmage'.

 

[Sabotaged_Enigma]

Problem is, if I had a rig that supports that function, what's the reason NOT to buy a Radeon card?
Buy an Arc card just because it's "cheap"? Well, what about DX11 games and other games that Intel claims to lack optimisation?
And for a product like this, I don't know whether its driver is gonna be any good, and neither do I know whether this product would be soon abandoned and end support.

 

[ZoneDymo]

@RidiculousOwO
Well that is the gamble isnt it?

a handful of games will be tested by reviewers and Intel promises to continue support.
so you will know of a few that will work and maybe those are what you play.

We can expect future games to work well, just past games might be bad but there is a list out there already with games that work well and those that dont and I expect that list to grow.

The upside? well they claim best price performance for the stuff that does work, so up to the consumer.


I have an RX480 so a card that can match a 3060/rx6600 would be a nice upgrade for me, but we also have new cards from nvidia and AMD on the horizon so ill be waiting to see what those will be like and how that might affect Arc pricing, then ill make a choice on what to get.

 

[usiname]

Its not even cheap, its on same or close to the price of the competitor's cards in same performance level. For beta product this is not acceptable price. You also speak about how the ReBar is required and the new systems support it, but how many people actually will know about that, will update their BIOS if it is not implemented in their current BIOS yet and will enable it? A very small percentage in my opinion, people just plug and play. That is why, the reviews should show ReBar On/Off performance

 

[GreiverBlade]

I know my B550 board supports ReBar via a BIOS update, just that I am not sure how far back did AMD enable this feature.

about full fledged RE-BAR... in the BIOS it shows RE-BAR in many hardware monitoring it shows the same name, in Adrenalin it shows AMD SAM (AMD Smartacess Memory) which is RE-BAR but AMD calling
i have it enabled and works just fine

and AMD rig with Nvidia GPU RE-BAR do work with the latest BIOS, tested with a friend who has the same Mobo but with a 5800X and a RTX 3070Ti

well that's it for me ... the only interest i had in ARC was a LP A380 or lower model to replace a GT730 on a Q77 express motherboard (no RE-BAR hehe ... ) RX 6400 4gb it is then

also one ARC review here mentioned it was working well with AMD rigs

Intel Arc A380 Review - Runs Fine on AMD Ryzen

Intel Arc A380 is the first graphics card that the Blue Team is releasing this year. It's based on the new Xe "Alchemist" architecture, which includes support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing. In our in-depth review of the A380 we check rasterization performance, RT performance, power, heat...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Vayra86]

The fact that they hired Ryan Shrout back in the day was telling volumes about the management at Intel. Him still working there is the confirmation that Intel won't make it any time soon.

The guy shouldn't be on TV either, look at it. Sad puppy eyes are his neutral stance or something, its really odd. In the picture he is putting every fiber in his body to work on producing a smile.

I'm still convinced Intel took him hostage and he's trying his best at signalling us to save him.

 

[Rob6502TPU]

I don't believe it is a bad product. The limitations with the hardware could boil down to the decisions they made to may be speed up development/ cut cost. For example, the hardware cannot run DX9 natively and the need for ReBar to run well, both are actually not deal breakers.

the timing. We are now at the last month of Q3 2022, and the product is not even available in store. With Nvidia likely to kick off the next gen GPU announcement soon, whatever excitement with the ARC GPU will fade away very quickly, if there is any excitement at all now.

A very reasonable post but if you look closely at past interviews, like Intel Lisa Pearce with Dr Cutress they were very aware of the requirements of DX9, DX11 as well as Vulkan and DX12.
The tech journalists are apparently reporting verbatim as if what Intel Tom ex Nvidia and Ryan ex PC Per scandal and Shrout research were unquestionably true.
1) When you consider what Ryan put out Q1 about DX11 in-game as Alchemist was being fabbed, you smell BS here. Ryan claimed big wins.
2) Intel Tom had claimed Arc was designed for Re-BAR but no mention was made prior to the debacle. The memory transfers have to go over a bus to arrive at dGPU .. if you look into PCIE you'll find payload sizes of 4K which would allow error correction and bus sharing.
Don't you think NVME drives wouldn't like "long burst mode transfers" to/from DRAM buffers?
256MB apertures were standard when Arc was designed, nobody used Re-BAR, yet Intel AXG were going to bet their GPU range around it?
3) Intel Tom contradicted his own statement live on PC World show suggesting the memory controller had pre-existed and they hadn't seen the significance.
That's throwing the design engineers under bus, like the driver people, anyone but the management of delayed Arc project.
Ryan Shrout is notorious for slanted benchmarks to mislead people.

Those suspecting the delays and Cannon Lake China only launch was to hide performance problems they couldn't fix in software have good reasons to doubt the. AXG marketing people.