What are your thoughs on next gen Intel Battlemage GPUs?

[yfn_ratchet]

Like many others, I'm holding out for the high-end release. The drop of the B580 before Christmas does seem to be Intel making the best of a few factors:

• Need to release faster than the big GPU players
• Possible yield/supply issues with high-end Battlemage
• Too late in year to do Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals, needs to be palatable at non-sale prices

The B570/B580 is in a spot to capture a lot of last-minute gaming gifts especially since it's positioned to be the Fortnite/CS2/Valorant/Apex tech-brick of Intel's lineup—a big seller, given how many 4060s and 7600XTs get moved. It's also a good tell for how high and how low Battlemage can be expected to extend. Both the B300 series and B700 series are going to rely on how well the B500 series goes over to drive sales in their own markets: homelab/budget and midrange/enthusiast segments, respectively.

 

[eidairaman1]

Drivers are the most important thing to improve like with Alchemist, though they've gotten better in the last two+ years. I almost got an A770 two years ago but ended up with a RX 6700 XT instead, they were both priced at 480EUR back then.

Competition is always good anyway.

Lets Add PowerVR/Imagination Technologies, S3 into the fray

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I am... Not hopeful.

Intel is a complete crap show right now, they're not even executing on their core product well, let alone when trying to break into a very established duopoly with two very established players.

Battlemage has to not just do OK. It needs to do GREAT, good enough for people to feel like it will still be a thing one or two or three years from now.

Outside of tech tourists, no one wants to pick up a GPU that is going to be abandonware paperweight in a few years. Alchemist is already struggling with this, so Battlemage isn't even starting from a particularly good foundation of trust there.

We know the Xe2 arch is pretty good in low power workloads. I just hope it can scale up into a competitive product, and I hope the Arc driver team is sufficiently beefed to tackle the driver challenge of maintaining Alchemist while dropping monthlies or whatever is needed to get Battlemage up to speed.

 

[Solaris17]

Alchemist is already struggling with this, so Battlemage isn't even starting from a particularly good foundation of trust there.

How?

 

[GodisanAtheist]

How?

There are still a good number of relatively popular older games that need DXVK/tinkering to get working properly. Plenty of the AssCreed games, Fallout 3, Tomb Raider 2013 etc.

Performance is also regressing ever so slightly in newer stuff vs the competition (7600/4060).

General vibe I also get from actual users online (rare though they may be) is that the driver situation started bad, got pretty OK for a while, and now is backsliding as the team reorients for Battlemage (Games will launch and run, but have stuttering/framepacing issues etc that others dont seem to have).

 

[Solaris17]

properly. Plenty of the AssCreed games, Fallout 3, Tomb Raider 2013 etc.

Where? Which ones? Tomb raider worked for me?

General vibe I also get from actual users online (rare though they may be) is that the driver situation started bad, got pretty OK for a while, and now is backsliding

who? What communities? I maintain the firmware matrix and there driver release cadence is faster than any other GPU manufacturer on the planet and they work amazing.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Where? Which ones? Tomb raider worked for me?

who? What communities? I maintain the firmware matrix and there driver release cadence is faster than any other GPU manufacturer on the planet and they work amazing.

-I've been following along on the thread here since mid-2023.

Thread 'Intel ARC owners thread. 71 games tested, retested, and counting. Includes productivity experiences. Feel free to add your results.'

Info - Intel ARC Alchemist owners thread. Now 75 games tested, retested, and counting. Includes productivity experiences. Feel free to add your results.

System Specs: Ryzen 7 5800X3D DeepCool Castle 120mm AIO 2x16GB CL18 4000 MT/s Gigabyte B550i AORUS PRO AX (ReBar enabled) 2TB Silicon Image UD90 gen 4 nvme EVGA SFX 650W gold full modular CoolerMaster NR200 mini-ITX case Intel ARC A750 LE (Always the latest driver) ASRock Challenger A380 MSI...

forums.anandtech.com

 

[GreiverBlade]

thought, well they bring something new on the mid range sector, and by new i only mean : a 3rd choice and maybe XeSS (at least it's hardware agnostic like FSR )
tho, i hope pricing will be a tad better than previous gen... because i would have loved to get an A380 LP for my secondary PC, now it's finally priced lower than an RX 6400 or a RTX 3050 LP, tho it is still not worth it due to the ReBAR requirement and performances without it versus these 2 cards (so, i kept my GT730 instead )

hilariously i was right ... : "Alchemist had no alchemy" and "Battlemage will not really fight any battle", maybe tone down the naming scheme?
(Celestial hum ... let's hope they will not be grounded or worse cast into inferno)
but Intel did persevere and improved their driver ... i give them that

 

[Dr. Dro]

Pricing is very good, 12 GB is very welcome, XeSS works well. As long as drivers continue improving, Arc B580 will be a great GPU

 

[y2faulty]

I dunno, it doesn't really convince me. Eventually it will all be down to pricing, but 10% over the 4060 (a terrible price/perf gpu) means what, 3-5% over the 7600xt? The 7600xt is already 250€ where I live. Let's say you can get the B580 for 230€. I woulnd't trade the uncertainty it comes with Intel to save 20 bucks..

EDIT: some bullshit I said. The "normal" 7600 is 250 (only 8gigs) , 7600xt is 320.
So you'd save ~50€ buyng the B580. Now it makes more sense. Still, nothing to write home about. RT performance looks great, but who uses RT anyway at this level? And you get 4gigs less -probably not needed, but still...

 

[QyInvoLing]

This f***ing card is 289$ in my region. Ridiculous. Who'll buy it instead of a 4060 of 260$ ??

 

[DavidC1]

General vibe I also get from actual users online (rare though they may be) is that the driver situation started bad, got pretty OK for a while, and now is backsliding as the team reorients for Battlemage (Games will launch and run, but have stuttering/framepacing issues etc that others dont seem to have).

Some of these issues, especially newer games are due to hardware. Tom Peterson has straight up said Day 0 compatibility will be much better because the underlying unit will use SIMD16, rather than SIMD8 on Alchemist. It'll have improved efficiency due to that, but it's the compatibility that really improves with SIMD16.

So in Alchemist the driver team needed hand tuned optimization for each and every game it had problems. Lot of those problems will automatically go away, meaning it frees up the team to do other work.

Also the Fast Clear feature introduced in this generation has been in existence with AMD/Nvidia cards for more than a decade now. That itself should improve lot of performance based issues such as stuttering.

It won't fix all the issues, but it'll be a lot better. My bigger worry is Gelsinger leaving. I would not buy any Intel product right now. The future of the company is dim. Also Gelsinger wanted to push GPUs.

 

[Kraust]

This f***ing card is 289$ in my region. Ridiculous. Who'll buy it instead of a 4060 of 260$ ??

An RTX 4060 8GB is $300 in my region. People seem to forget that other regions exist.

 

[QyInvoLing]

An RTX 4060 8GB is $300 in my region. People seem to forget that other regions exist.

In this condition, b580 seems to be competetive! Would you like to give it a try?

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Some of these issues, especially newer games are due to hardware. Tom Peterson has straight up said Day 0 compatibility will be much better because the underlying unit will use SIMD16, rather than SIMD8 on Alchemist. It'll have improved efficiency due to that, but it's the compatibility that really improves with SIMD16.

So in Alchemist the driver team needed hand tuned optimization for each and every game it had problems. Lot of those problems will automatically go away, meaning it frees up the team to do other work.

Also the Fast Clear feature introduced in this generation has been in existence with AMD/Nvidia cards for more than a decade now. That itself should improve lot of performance based issues such as stuttering.

It won't fix all the issues, but it'll be a lot better. My bigger worry is Gelsinger leaving. I would not buy any Intel product right now. The future of the company is dim. Also Gelsinger wanted to push GPUs.

-Yeah, unfortunately Intel politics kinda makes their stuff untouchable right now if you're in the DIY space, unless you're just ok with potentially being stuck with a paperweight in 1-2 years when Intel ditches Arc.

 

[inquisitor1]

im hoping amd and intel upcoming gear bring the fight to nvidia with RT and davinci resolve/premiere cause nvidias prices are thieving.

if anything id be happy to go with intel if they can bring higher end cards then these at really attractive prices.

 

[AleXXX666]

A "nothing burger" - technical term, I promise
Medium class card by design that priced as higher end one (or low end one priced as mid range one).
Just another thing from Intel you can buy, but are afraid of consequences IF something goes wrong.

well, comparing to current Nvidia and AMD cards, Intel price to performance ratio is very nice. I suggest it will continue, because, otherwise, only dumb will buy Intel GPU for the price of better performing and age-prooven Nvidia or AMD cards.

 

[y2faulty]

This f***ing card is 289$ in my region. Ridiculous. Who'll buy it instead of a 4060 of 260$ ??

well it's faster than the 4060 and has more ram (yes, the 8gigs are beginning to be a problem) so...

but obviously, you have to take in consideration the uncertainty that Intel brings with it, which may make up for more than saving 50 bucks or being 10% faster

 

[AlienIsGOD]

If the price is right AND the drivers are more mature than 1st gen battle mage then I see it as a win. In Canada pricing for gfx cards is whack so it's gotta be a good deal to catch consumers eyes, I'd consider one if it performs well, my Rx 5700 is long in the tooth and I'm not company specific when doing gfx upgrades...it's simply the best deal for my budget

 

[Dristun]

This f***ing card is 289$ in my region. Ridiculous. Who'll buy it instead of a 4060 of 260$ ??

Some bold individuals are taking preorders for ~$490 for a B580 LE over here haha.