Massive Intel Arc GPU Driver Update Claims 10% to 77% Gains

[lukeintheo]

One of my all time favorites was the 8800gt. I picked mine up for $199 and it out performed the $400 8800gts and was fairly close to the $599 8800GTX. That was a pretty cool time to be a budget gamer.

OMG I remember those days playing Crysis. But, can it run Crysis? the 8800GT was amazing for the price.

 

[Red Falcon]

Anything that potentially takes market share away from Nvidia and AMD is a positive in my books.

This, competition is good, and we have needed it from a 3rd party for years now.

When was this? I'm still just in my mid 20s and this fascinates me.

You've been a member here since 2004, which was 19 years ago.
Kind of doubting you are in your mid 20s...

 

[blackmomba]

I kind of stopped buying the 'we need more competition' thing because a new competitor in the space usually brings little to nothing for consumers in the long term

In the past, the AMD vs Intel wars were generally about AMD offering less performance for less money. Now that they've caught up with Ryzen, they charge the same as Intel for similarly specced platforms and performance

RDNA isn't quite up there with GeForce so they still need to charge less for their cards. Pay less, get less.

Now Intel's on the scene and they've got to charge even less. But once/if these two catch up to GeForce in terms for feature set and performance, they'll charge the same.

Where is the competition exactly?

If you get in early on a new product, yeah you're encouraging competition but you're probably getting an inferior product.

Even in markets for other components where there are more players (gigabyte, MSI, Asus, etc), you aren't going to see more than 10-20$ difference between similarly specced products. Is that the extent of it all? Competition saves us a couple bucks here and there ? Dunno man

 

[Marees]

I kind of stopped buying the 'we need more competition' thing because a new competitor in the space usually brings little to nothing for consumers in the long term

In the past, the AMD vs Intel wars were generally about AMD offering less performance for less money. Now that they've caught up with Ryzen, they charge the same as Intel for similarly specced platforms and performance

RDNA isn't quite up there with GeForce so they still need to charge less for their cards. Pay less, get less.

Now Intel's on the scene and they've got to charge even less. But once/if these two catch up to GeForce in terms for feature set and performance, they'll charge the same.

Where is the competition exactly?

If you get in early on a new product, yeah you're encouraging competition but you're probably getting an inferior product.

Even in markets for other components where there are more players (gigabyte, MSI, Asus, etc), you aren't going to see more than 10-20$ difference between similarly specced products. Is that the extent of it all? Competition saves us a couple bucks here and there ? Dunno man

I think slightly inferior product is OK, if you are looking for a deal. For example AMD polaris cards were more value than Nvidia GTX 1060

 

[Lakados]

I kind of stopped buying the 'we need more competition' thing because a new competitor in the space usually brings little to nothing for consumers in the long term

In the past, the AMD vs Intel wars were generally about AMD offering less performance for less money. Now that they've caught up with Ryzen, they charge the same as Intel for similarly specced platforms and performance

RDNA isn't quite up there with GeForce so they still need to charge less for their cards. Pay less, get less.

Now Intel's on the scene and they've got to charge even less. But once/if these two catch up to GeForce in terms for feature set and performance, they'll charge the same.

Where is the competition exactly?

If you get in early on a new product, yeah you're encouraging competition but you're probably getting an inferior product.

Even in markets for other components where there are more players (gigabyte, MSI, Asus, etc), you aren't going to see more than 10-20$ difference between similarly specced products. Is that the extent of it all? Competition saves us a couple bucks here and there ? Dunno man

They can compete for features or performance, but regardless whoever gets their part to market first sets the benchmark for what the price for that price/feature set will be, everybody else has to step in line or face the wrath of their investors who are the ones holding the reins on this. If Nvidia launches first and says this performance level here is worth $1200, AMD can't come out and say "F-That noise, we say it's $600!" and release their competing card there, AMD can't keep up with the supply that level of demand would generate it would sell out instantly, the 3'rd party market would step in and charge right there relative to the Nvidia part, then the investors seeing all of that as lost profit turn and sue AMD for undervaluing their product. The only way any GPU manufacturer right now be it Intel, AMD, or Nvidia could significantly undercut their competitors is if they manage to develop something that offers a significant performance uplift generationally, while also maintaining a ~60% profit margin, or develop a method of substantially cutting costs so they can maintain a ~60% margin that would let them cut MSRP accordingly. The technology right now just doesn't exist for either of those scenarios, the only reason the Intel cards are even as cheap as they are right now is that they have made it clear they are a loss leader, they are priced where they are because Intel can't compete with features, stability, or performance and they are selling them at an operating loss for the sake of market share. Should Intel ever catch up to Nvidia and AMD, you better bet they will also play the same games, they have to.

The only hope we have is a long shot wherein Intel not only catches up to AMD and Nvidia in terms of features and performance but also is able to throw their massive manufacturing capabilities behind it, with the threat of Intel being able to flood the market AMD and Nvidia would be forced to battle for market share with lower prices because if they come in high Intel could shift their production schedule flood out GPUs below market value and take it that way. But if Intel does do that they face opening themselves up to lawsuits for being anti-competitive and blah blah blah, so they would need to be extremely confident in their position to even attempt doing that, so like I said long shot.

 

[NightReaver]

I also don't buy the "competition" angle because the same exact people will just go "muh CUDA. muh RT" and buy green anyways, price be damned.

Sorry guys, cat's out of the bag. PC builders have now set precedent for what prices are acceptable. If Intel approaches what Nvidia can do, they'll be charging similar prices just like AMD. I very much doubt Intel is going to be whipping out any tech that puts Nvidia on the backfoot.

 

[Kardonxt]

I kind of stopped buying the 'we need more competition' thing because a new competitor in the space usually brings little to nothing for consumers in the long term

In the past, the AMD vs Intel wars were generally about AMD offering less performance for less money. Now that they've caught up with Ryzen, they charge the same as Intel for similarly specced platforms and performance

You have to factor in price to performance too. Intel didn't start giving us a meaningful core count boost in low \ midrange CPUs until Ryzen forced them to. Look at the simple fact that overclocking is pretty much dead. Manufactures aren't sitting on performance like they used to. They are squeezing out every drop of performance they can to not loose the benchmark wars.

Without competition you might have some cheaper CPUs but that's because they would still be feeding us old tech, with negligible per gen performance gains, and sitting on the good stuff or reserving it for enterprise.

Same goes for GPUs. If Nvidia and AMD weren't trying to surpass each other GPUs would go back to being 1/2 the size with 1/2 the tdp. Sure your high end gpu might be $699 but it would probably perform accordingly.

 

[NamelessPFG]

Well, that at least addresses one of the reasons why I won't buy an Intel GPU, and a pretty big reason at that.

Granted, my tastes go even older than DX9 at times; I'm talking anywhere from DX6 to 3dfx Glide, when Glide was literally your only software rendering alternative because Direct3D and OpenGL had no adoption yet. Thank goodness for dgVoodoo and other wrappers... (Of course, if you remember 3dfx, you also remember the Intel i740 and how it got stomped by 3dfx, NVIDIA and ATI even back then.)

Now I still need to look into two other things:

-Performance without Resizable BAR, because Kaby Lake and older systems don't support it and would really benefit from a potent $250-300 GPU in today's market to keep those systems going a bit longer. (Anything past an RTX 3060 12 GB performance-wise is a waste of money on such old CPUs and platforms, but a 7700K would benefit from something more than just a GTX 980. I'm currently thinking "used RTX 2080 for $250 or less".)

-VR support. Yes, VR is exactly the sort of thing where you want an RTX 4080 or 4090 (ideally the latter) for stuff like DCS, No Man's Sky, Assetto Corza Competizione, stupid demanding (and just poorly optimized) games like that, but I had to make do with a GTX 980 for seven years and still enjoyed simpler stuff like GORN, COMPOUND, Robo Recall, etc.

An Arc A750 is more powerful than that old GTX 980, at least, and should allow people to try it on a cheap HMD without getting stopped by technical issues that AMD and NVIDIA don't suffer from. If nothing else, it'll remove a potential deal-breaking point from Battlemage and later architectures down the roadmap, when they might actually have the performance for serious PC VR.

 

[erek]

Hoping for even more as time goes

"Intel Graphics today released the latest version of the Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Version 101.4091 adds support for the iGPUs of 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake-P" mobile processors. The Intel Arc Control software now supports a standalone desktop mode. Among the handful issues fixed with this release, an application crash noticed in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide during the character-selection screen on Arc discrete GPUs, has been fixed. For the iGPUs of Intel Core processors (11th Gen and later), the drivers fix color/display corruption issues with Need for Speed Unbound and Battlefield 2042; and an intermittent application crash issue with Total War: Warhammer III. Grab the driver from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4091"

https://www.techpowerup.com/304298/intel-releases-arc-gpu-graphics-drivers-101-4091