GPU With System Requirements, Intel Arc Graphics Hardware Locked?

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rgMekanic

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Could Intel's new Arc Graphics be locked behind a hardware gate? The answer may be yes.

After upgrading my internet here at home, I decided to take a look and see if there happened to be any updated network drivers available. I'm still on the X99 platform with the machine in question, and my trusty MSI X99s Xpower AC uses Intel NICs, so I fired up Intel's Driver and Support Assistant.

While no new drivers for my system were found. I was greeted with a very interesting message.

1646008531603.png


Intrigued of course I clicked learn more, which unfortunately only brings you to the generic Intel support page. Searching for "Arc requirements" bore no fruit either.

Could this mean we have hardware with a hardware requirement? One could argue that it's the PCIe speeds, but one would also think the card could easily throttle to PCIe3 if that's the case. Depending on what these "system requirements" are, Intel may not be the 3rd competitor in the GPU field we were hoping for, but perhaps only an accessory for the few who have the "required" system to go with them.
 
rgMekanic said:
Could Intel's new Arc Graphics be locked behind a hardware gate? The answer may be yes.

After upgrading my internet here at home, I decided to take a look and see if there happened to be any updated network drivers available. I'm still on the X99 platform with the machine in question, and my trusty MSI X99s Xpower AC uses Intel NICs, so I fired up Intel's Driver and Support Assistant.

While no new drivers for my system were found. I was greeted with a very interesting message.

View attachment 448727

Intrigued of course I clicked learn more, which unfortunately only brings you to the generic Intel support page. Searching for "Arc requirements" bore no fruit either.

Could this mean we have hardware with a hardware requirement? One could argue that it's the PCIe speeds, but one would also think the card could easily throttle to PCIe3 if that's the case. Depending on what these "system requirements" are, Intel may not be the 3rd competitor in the GPU field we were hoping for, but perhaps only an accessory for the few who have the "required" system to go with them.
Click to expand...
could it be UEFI vs "Legacy"?
 
Yeah the UEFI vs Legacy thing could make sense.
Also, are you on Windows 10 or 11? I imagine it's likely Intel will restrict Arc to Win11.
AFAIK, the only reason that Iris Xe Max dGPU was locked to certain new Intel platforms was because the Xe GPU core was so closely related to the Xe iGPUs that it lacked certain basic IO and firmware functions.
 
Word is Intel is keenly aware of non-x86 platforms and their interest in Arc, and are working to accommodate those in their open drivers. My guess is Arc will be UEFI-only and they’re gearing up to screen out platforms that won’t have drivers outright.
 
NattyKathy said:
....I imagine it's likely Intel will restrict Arc to Win11....
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That's makes no sense.

It could be the UEFI bios vs Legacy. rgMekanic, is that os install using Legacy boot?

If so, you can convert to UEFI without reloading the OS, as long as you are running Windows10 build 2004 or later. You would need to ensure the bios is up to date, and after updating go in to see that UEFI is selectable.
in windows you launch a command prompt as administrator, run mbr2gpt.exe, and can convert to UEFI. If you got multiple partitions be sure to use diskpart to identify the proper partition/disk number before using the mbr2gpt utility. There are how to steps with a google search.

We would all be curious if you converted, if the Intel driver assistant still reported your pc as being incompatible.

If you do not want to convert to UEFI, you could pull the drive and do a fresh install as UEFI boot on a spare drive (chances are you got an SSD laying around), then run the intel driver assistant again.
 
NattyKathy said:
Also, are you on Windows 10 or 11? I imagine it's likely Intel will restrict Arc to Win11.
Click to expand...

I am not sure about the likely (why ?, the os is very similar to the previous version and that was not in the field at all when they made the GPU and started to make the drivers for it, is not yet that common and they will continue to make Win10 driver for their older GPUs for a very long time)

https://www.digitaltrends.com/compu...st-a380-benchmarked-a500-a700-specs-revealed/
SiSoftware also gives us more information about the GPU’s exact specs. However, the benchmark doesn’t divulge anything else about the system the card was tested with. All we know is that SiSoftware was using the 64-bit version of Windows 10 and the latest Intel graphics drivers, and that turbo mode was enabled in every test.
 
GoodBoy said:
That's makes no sense.

It could be the UEFI bios vs Legacy. rgMekanic, is that os install using Legacy boot?

If so, you can convert to UEFI without reloading the OS, as long as you are running Windows10 build 2004 or later. You would need to ensure the bios is up to date, and after updating go in to see that UEFI is selectable.
in windows you launch a command prompt as administrator, run mbr2gpt.exe, and can convert to UEFI. If you got multiple partitions be sure to use diskpart to identify the proper partition/disk number before using the mbr2gpt utility. There are how to steps with a google search.

We would all be curious if you converted, if the Intel driver assistant still reported your pc as being incompatible.

If you do not want to convert to UEFI, you could pull the drive and do a fresh install as UEFI boot on a spare drive (chances are you got an SSD laying around), then run the intel driver assistant again.
Click to expand...

Negative sir, UEFI only, legacy disabled, all win 10 whql stuff enabled.
 
rgMekanic said:
Negative sir, UEFI only, legacy disabled, all win 10 whql stuff enabled.
Click to expand...
Thanks for clarifying.

No idea why that video card would be incompatible with x99 chipset. My guess it that it relies on some part of the chipset to function. Could also be incompatible with AMD cpu's.... doesn't seem like a smart move by Intel to limit its compatibility with different or older platforms.

Someone running an AMD cpu, try installing the Intel Driver and Support Assistant, see what it reports.
 
GoodBoy said:
Thanks for clarifying.

No idea why that video card would be incompatible with x99 chipset. My guess it that it relies on some part of the chipset to function. Could also be incompatible with AMD cpu's.... doesn't seem like a smart move by Intel to limit its compatibility with different or older platforms.

Someone running an AMD cpu, try installing the Intel Driver and Support Assistant, see what it reports.
Click to expand...

I've got two x370 systems and a b550 system at home as well. If no one else trust it before I get home, I plan to.
 
Pretty sure Phoronix reported a while back that Intel was working to add OSS support to linux for Intel Arc as well.
 
rgMekanic said:
Intrigued of course I clicked learn more, which unfortunately only brings you to the generic Intel support page. Searching for "Arc requirements" bore no fruit either.
Click to expand...
I found a few reports of the same issue in Intel's community forums, with one of them asking specifically about PCIe generation requirements. It's unanswered as of this writing, but maybe someone affiliated with Intel will reply. Their site search is pretty terrible.
 
Back in 2017 Intel announced that they planned to drop support for BIOS in 2020, they verywell may have gone through with that and simply not included a GPU Bios on the cards and instead opted for UEFI only. They would hardly be the first, AMD has done this for many of their cards and some NVidia vendors have opted to do the same.

A quick google search of "Make UEFI Graphics Card work with Legacy BIOS Motherboard" results in a good number of cards that people have or have not been able to make work on a BIOS setup and many more just opting to rebuilt into UEFI to make things functional.
 
Lakados said:
Back in 2017 Intel announced that they planned to drop support for BIOS in 2020, they verywell may have gone through with that and simply not included a GPU Bios on the cards and instead opted for UEFI only. They would hardly be the first, AMD has done this for many of their cards and some NVidia vendors have opted to do the same.

A quick google search of "Make UEFI Graphics Card work with Legacy BIOS Motherboard" results in a good number of cards that people have or have not been able to make work on a BIOS setup and many more just opting to rebuilt into UEFI to make things functional.
Click to expand...
Yeah, but rgMekanic is running UEFI.

I don't see any alerts when I run it, mentioning it either way. I'm on x299 chipset which is PCIe 3.0.
 
GoodBoy said:
I don't see any alerts when I run it, mentioning it either way. I'm on x299 chipset which is PCIe 3.0.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I don't see anything either way either. In settings on the driver and support assistant page it says Installed Version: 22.1.8.8, which may or may not be useful information. Not sure where an alert message like the screenshot would be, but I looked around everywhere and didn't see anything like that.
 
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