Intel Detects 43 GPU Driver Bugs... By Watching a Review Video

[Raevenlord]

Intel has been in the firing lines for the consecutive delays and general lack of clarity surrounding the launch of its Arc Alchemist family of discrete GPUs. Staggered availability has meant that the only currently available Arc GPU - the A380 - is still only available in the Chinese market, where the Internet café game is still strong. Intel drivers in particular have been fraught with bugs and as we know, software can bring even the most competent hardware to its knees. So there's maybe an echo of warning bells to the real state of Arc's software suite when Intel admits to having detected 43 different GPU driver bugs... While watching a review video from Gamers Nexus.

We've conducted our own review of Intel's Arc A380 (after importing it from China), and we did call to attention how we "encountered numerous bugs including bluescreens, corrupted desktop after startup, random systems hangs, system getting stuck during shutdown sequences, and more." Only AMD and NVIDIA seem to have an idea on just how complex the matter of breaking into and maintaining a position in this particular product segment takes. Intel itself is still in the process of learning just what that takes, as its own VP and general manager of the Visual Computing Group, Lisa Pearce, penned in a blog post.

"For example, we filed 43 issues with our engineering team from a review of the A380 by Gamers Nexus. We had corrected 4 of those issues by the end of July. Since then, we corrected 21 UI issues in our driver release on August 19, and it also includes Day 0 support for Saints Row, Madden NFL 23, fixes for Stray and Horizon Zero Dawn crashes, Marvel's Spider-Man performance fix, and fixes on SmoothSync corruptions. We are taking similar approaches with reports from other press reviews.

We are continuing to learn what it will take for us to be successful. Some of the issues were related to our installer and how it downloaded unique components after initial installation. This allows us to have a smaller initial download to get users started quicker. But unexpected failures are causing that process to be unreliable, and later this year we will be moving to a combined package that is downloaded and installed all at once. No more installer issues.

It's important that Intel is taking the feedback and review process to heart - but then again, that's the least that can be expected from a multi-billion dollar company as it attempts to break into a new market. It still strikes us as... noteworthy that years into development, multiple delayed launch dates, and promotions galore for some of the designers behind Arc Alchemist have somehow led us to this place in time, where Intel's hopes seem to be bogged down left and right.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Exilarch]

Good thing they watch review videos at least...

 

[Daven]

“Some of the issues were related to our installer and how it downloaded unique components after initial installation. This allows us to have a smaller initial download to get users started quicker.”

You only have to download a 1 MB file 450 times instead of a 450 MB file once. Now that’s progress! And AMD and Nvidia never thought of it.

 

[stimpy88]

I think the press wilfully forgets the FACT that Intel has been making graphics products for over 12 years, and has been making crappy drivers ever since. The fact that they scaled up a CPU based GPU to be inside it's own silicon is nothing to do with anything. The same issues plagued the HD and UHD integrated graphics for years after they were launched.

I will say it again. Intel does not know how to make complex drivers. If its a single .dll .inf and a security file, they seem to be a little better, but even then, they mess up on a regular basis. The fact that Intel has never addressed this is telling of the management and priorities of the company.

 

[ZoneDymo]

I think the press wilfully forgets the FACT that Intel has been making graphics products for over 12 years, and has been making crappy drivers ever since. The fact that they scaled up a CPU based GPU to be inside it's own silicon is nothing to do with anything. The same issues plagued the HD and UHD integrated graphics for years after they were launched.

I will say it again. Intel does not know how to make complex drivers. If its a single .dll .inf and a security file, they seem to be a little better, but even then, they mess up on a regular basis. The fact that Intel has never addressed this is telling of the management and priorities of the company.

12600k user here, latest driver corrupts youtube vids for the first 5 seconds so im using the previous and then still I ahve issues if I have to videos "open" at the same time where one suddenly copies to the other and I need to refresh that one to get the correct one back.

so yeah...not great.

That said the title is a bit click baity, as GN points out, its good they take this to heart and work on fixing it.
Obviously this should not be needed for such basic flaws...but it is what it is and Intel is doing the right thing now.

 

[Daven]

I think the press wilfully forgets the FACT that Intel has been making graphics products for over 12 years, and has been making crappy drivers ever since. The fact that they scaled up a CPU based GPU to be inside it's own silicon is nothing to do with anything. The same issues plagued the HD and UHD integrated graphics for years after they were launched.

I will say it again. Intel does not know how to make complex drivers. If its a single .dll .inf and a security file, they seem to be a little better, but even then, they mess up on a regular basis. The fact that Intel has never addressed this is telling of the management and priorities of the company.

Intel first thought they could take a bunch of atoms and make a gpu (Larrabee). That didn’t work. Then they hired Raja and he said he could scale up their IGP linearly no problem (Xe). That didn’t work either. In both cases Intel was relying on poor software development. I’m not sure what they do now.

I read somewhere that Nvidia has way more software engineers than hardware. If true, this is really smart. Since Intel treats chips as a commodity market to be bought and sold like gold or oil and not technology providing a function, I’m not sure their corporate culture will ever adapt to an up and down software/hardware development scheme. Institutional corporate memory seems too engrained no matter how many execs they replace.

 

[bug]

numerous bugs including bluescreens, corrupted desktop after startup, random systems hangs, system getting stuck during shutdown sequences, and more

After all these years just staring eventlessly at the screen, in the words of Duke Nukem: finally! some action!

Joking aside, this is actually scary. Imho, nobody realistically expects Intel to go toe to toe with Nvidia and AMD on their fist iteration. Pricing and driver quality will dictate whether Intel earns mindshare or not. And they seem to be pretty lax about the drivers.

 

[chrcoluk]

Driver packages really should be full offline installers.

 

[bug]

Driver packages really should be full offline installers.

Imagine an online installer for a network driver

 

[Deleted member 185088]

This allows us to have a smaller initial download to get users started quicker.

How this is a good idea, you still need to download the while thing in order to make it work.
They could make the driver downloadable alone.

 

[Bubster]

so much waste...Intel wasting $3.5 - $5 billion on (on the job training) for its Arc disaster only to learn how to correct their mess from youtubers...Intel could have bought the patent of that chinese graphics card Innosilicon Fenghua instead of this Arc waste.

 

[Assimilator]

The number of bugs is irrelevant.

The impact of these bugs, and how easily Gamers Nexus was able to find them, is. To put it bluntly, most of those bugs are critical enough that it effectively breaks the product as a whole. No sane company would even think about launching a product in such a poor state; this is pre-alpha at best.

Yet Intel went ahead and did it anyway. Not to some beta testers, but to the entirety of China. What does that say about the company?

It says that Intel's contempt for its customers is so much that it doesn't even feel obliged to ship them a working product. If a Kickstarter project did that, people would be demanding their money back and very vocally complaining online if that didn't happen. Yet we have the legions of Intel apologists telling us this is okay, it's acceptable, it's normal, of course Intel make good on their promise, we just have to trust them and wait.

That's bullshit and if you have ever insinuated something like that you should be incredibly ashamed of yourself. Your complicity in Intel's anti-consumer stance is exactly what allows companies to get away with such vile behaviour.

If I was from China, I would be incredibly insulted that Intel apparently sees my country as only good enough to alpha-test crappy products.

How this is a good idea, you still need to download the while thing in order to make it work.
They could make the driver downloadable alone.

They would never do anything that useful or helpful, if they do that they can't add their shitty unnecessary "Control Centre" that is basically nothing more than a telemetry harvester.

 

[bug]

How this is a good idea, you still need to download the while thing in order to make it work.
They could make the driver downloadable alone.

I think the idea is that without a driver, Windows still installs a generic driver which is enough for you to go to a website and download what you need. And then you download the bare minimum while the rest is downloaded in the background, possibly on-demand.
Of course, as Intel found out, that raises the problem of getting things to work after you download them individually. I imagine this is not as simple as having a bunch of services talk to each other, but may require replacing shaders on-the-fly and whatnot.
Be that as it may, it's an internal implementation detail, it should be entirely transparent to the user.

 

[Deleted member 185088]

I think the idea is that without a driver, Windows still installs a generic driver which is enough for you to go to a website and download what you need. And then you download the bare minimum while the rest is downloaded in the background, possibly on-demand.
Of course, as Intel found out, that raises the problem of getting things to work after you download them individually. I imagine this is not as simple as having a bunch of services talk to each other, but may require replacing shaders on-the-fly and whatnot.
Be that as it may, it's an internal implementation detail, it should be entirely transparent to the user.

It is fascinating to me, I remember installing GPU drivers for i5 2500k (10 years ago give or take), how could they mess up something they have been doing for ages.
Maybe as @Assimilator suggested they just added this new telemetry to use us a beta testers.

 

[1d10t]

Does Intel finally figured out that GPU be it iGPU or dGPU need driver to work? I'm not trying to undermine them but they been dealing with GPU like what, decades ago?

 

[Crackong]

 

[bug]

It is fascinating to me, I remember installing GPU drivers for i5 2500k (10 years ago give or take), how could they mess up something they have been doing for ages.

"If it works, don't fix it" - it seems they forgot this.

Maybe as @Assimilator suggested they just added this new telemetry to use us a beta testers.

Telemetry is essential for software this young (and not only). If you ever talked to a client trying to find out what they did to break their stuff, you'd understand why.

 

[trsttte]

From the intel blog post: "For example, we filed 43 issues with our engineering team from a review of the A380 by Gamers Nexus" - as in they talked with Steve (and other youtubers, LTT said they spent 3 or 4 days talking with intel for the A380 laptop review for example), not that they simply watched his video, but again, makes for a more sensationalistic title/article if it's written like they just watched a video and figured out everything wrong from there

 

[SRB151]

The bigger problem is this, with all of this bad press, mediocre performance at best, and useless drivers, who's going to trust them and/or buy them other than a handful of Intel sycophants? As has been said before, for a company of this size with unlimited resources is inexcusable. Not sure how long this will last, with Intel shutting down unprofitable ventures. When you blow something this bad, you can extend the time to breakeven by years, even if fixed properly. No one is going to take a chance on them.

One more point, not sure what anyone else has seen, but aside from GN, Techspot, and the aforementioned single line in the review here, all the information I've seen about Intel's GPU efforts, they've been described as a great first attempt, just needs some driver polish, etc. It's good to know a few sites will tell the whole story..

 

[trsttte]

They would never do anything that useful or helpful, if they do that they can't add their shitty unnecessary "Control Centre" that is basically nothing more than a telemetry harvester.

At least it doesn't require and account like the competition, it's something I guess

Driver packages really should be full offline installers.

Or at the very list have an easy way to dowload the offline version. This online installers are just glorified download managers that prevent the user from clearly seing what version they're installing which sucks

 

[bug]

From the intel blog post: "For example, we filed 43 issues with our engineering team from a review of the A380 by Gamers Nexus" - as in they talked with Steve (and other youtubers, LTT said they spent 3 or 4 days talking with intel for the A380 laptop review for example), not that they simply watched his video, but again, makes for a more sensationalistic title/article if it's written like they just watched a video and figured out everything wrong from there

It's still 43 easily-spotted bugs that escaped their QA.

 

[Chomiq]

Why bother with putting millions into QA department when you can watch GN video instead.

 

[bug]

Why bother with putting millions into QA department when you can watch GN video instead.

You'd be surprised how lax some companies are when it comes to QA. I've recently lost sleep because someone thought a "simple" cloud solution can be released without much QA or a beta test phase...

 

[Assimilator]

You'd be surprised how lax some companies are when it comes to QA. I've recently lost sleep because someone thought a "simple" cloud solution can be released without much QA or a beta test phase...

You mean, they didn't think.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

You'd be surprised how lax some companies are when it comes to QA. I've recently lost sleep because someone thought a "simple" cloud solution can be released without much QA or a beta test phase...

Lack of QA should make anyone cringe. Intel being Intel will never learn from this and likely use the QA team person that does CPUs mainly.