My thoughts? Intel is doing what they should. Participating in the GPU market. You can glad hand and preach about any corporation, but having a third player is important.
Will it perform? No; not with a B560. I think a lot of people are too positive, and a lot of people are too critical. Generally to try and rally some kind of echo chamber about the logo they like to fall asleep with at night.
In history. Atleast as I have noticed since before dual cores became real. Is that architecture changes are stair cases, usually next to each other.
The low end B cards will not meet or out perform mid or high end A cards. Mid rage B cards might be slightly better than mid or on par with highend A cards. I dont think mid range will beat an A770. No Just like stairs the B770 will beat the A770 but you will need to wait for it to release.
People that are critical of Intel will "I told you so" and tell everyone the sky is falling, Intel is going out of business and everything else under the sun because they like beating people on the internet.
People that knew this would likely be the case will say nothing.
People that were somehow banking the history of every technology companies portfolio on the chance that Battlemage low/mid range cards will be 2x more powerful than an A770 will be dissapointed and lick there wounds, or convert to the super criticals in point 1.
My prediction? B560 will release first next month, be a little slower than A770 have marginal power efficiency gains and over all be fairly priced on paper, atleast given A770s arent going to be in prod and everyone will scalp an extra $30 because its the new hotness. Afterwards I predict they will be late to release, trailing 5 and 8 series after CES. Then they will release the high end line. It will be single digit percent better than A770. It will carry the same price point of ~350 like the launch of A770 a few years ago.
I am totally fine with this. Its literally there second architecture. It wont be a driver disaster and there ODMs like sparkle etc are now established so I anticipate availability to be better.
For gamers, I dont think this will be a remarkable release. For Intel and the industry? I think it will be. For competition? Not yet maybe in a few generations.
Battlemage will be where Intel tests there white papers. How many shaders nets how much %? etc. With each iteration the road of future design philosophy gets more clear.
Its important, imo that everyone stop thinking its the core2 and brisbane era. Though a lot of those people are older now and maybe its difficult to cement new concepts, but we have passed the threshold some years ago on performance. AMD 8 series wont shatter the 7900XTX. The 5090 isnt going to be worth it over the 4090. The new Ryzens and the new CPUs are going to be nothing to write home about.
For all technology manufacturers atleast when it comes to compute. We are reaching the end of silicon. 30% perf improvement process over process is long gone, look at your Q6600 and say thank you.
For a new player like Intel (and they are new, dont let the IGP cult brain wash you) even licking double digits on a new architecture (important to note this isnt an iteration, they arent making alchemist better) is like moving a digital mountain.
TL;DR?
I'll buy one, cool.
