Your first reaction to Intel's "Arc" Discrete GPU?

[W1zzard]

What do you think about Intel's upcoming GPU? Will it really affect us gamers?

 

[BSim500]

I'd vote for a mix of the above:-

- We absolutely do need a third player. Anyone else rememeber when we had Matrox, 3dfx, S3, Trident, Cirrus Logic, Orchid/ Diamond, Tseng Labs, etc, all competing it out? AMD & nVidia have both almost completely abandoned low-end / budget gaming (no 2050 or 3050, etc). If Intel pulls off a couple of budget hits like the 1050Ti / 1650 Super / 2060 and sells them for pre-scalped MSRP, it would really light a much needed fire under AMD & nVidia's rear ends.
- They might be expensive, or the low-mid cards might actually be affordable like the 10100F / 10400F.
- Definitely wait for reviews
- I'd seriously consider buying a low-end one, partly as a backup and partly to "toy" with. Probably not a high-end / expensive one though.
- Drivers are a big issues. The reason AMD & nVidia's are as bloated as they are is +20 years of backwards compatibility tweaks, shaders replacements, etc. So even if the technical quality of Intel's drivers are fine, it would be nice to see tech sites retesting some old games to see what impact lack of past optimisation in Intel's drivers bring vs AMD & nVidia's optimised ones.

 

[dir_d]

We need a 3rd player and this will be very welcomed. There was a time that Intel meant quality from software to hardware, if they can do the same thing here and polish these cards, EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT THE FASTEST, the cards will be an absolute hit.

 

[DonKnotts]

I'm not sure what to vote for. It's a toss up between:

• We need a third player
• They'll be just as expensive

I'd say wait for reviews too of course, but those two are definitely tied in my opinion.

 

[mtcn77]

I hope Intel understands a key point of being a billion dollar company - a lesson learned by the Oracle CEO. Sometimes the right thing - forming the right team - might differ between a million dollar company and a billion dollar company.
I hope Intel gets the right team and the right vision because the journey is more important than the 'destination' if they want to tread new ground. Intel's competitors won't hand over the lead, they need to develop from the ground up. They have focused on exclusives for too much in the past. Getting the gpu game right is about getting the generalized compute balance right. Nvidia is faster than AMD for delivering a faster "cache". Concordantly, AMD leaps forward when they get the recipe right. Pure execution resources just fulfill marketing targets. What Intel needs is getting the customer's blessing - not becoming like those out of touch companies running solely for the huge bonus at the end of the year. They need to hammer home the message they are developing something special with a storyline. The compensating factor must be that people like the product - not just something good on paper. They must intentionally create something that is out of balance, provided only by the grace of touching the customer's buttons right. They cannot hit the target right out of the gate, but they need to be current.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Definitely need a 3rd player to create better competitive pricing.

I think it will put pressure on AMD's and Nvidia's R&D departments to churn out better, and faster, products.

Likely at the cost of quality drivers.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I really wish Imagination Technologies would bring PowerVR back into the PC market space, then we'd potentially have four players and even more competition.
It's really sad how many companies pulled out of the graphics chip space, just as things were starting to take off.
Looking at this list almost makes me want to cry. So much wasted potential.

List of graphics chips and card companies - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

I really wish Imagination Technologies would bring PowerVR back into the PC market space, then we'd potentially have four players and even more competition.
It's really sad how many companies pulled out of the graphics chip space, just as things were starting to take off.
Looking at this list almost makes me want to cry. So much wasted potential.

List of graphics chips and card companies - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I wanna say some of that loss was due to Nvidia grand scheme of damaging vendors if they sell other cards. Not sure how many of those fall into that time frame.

 

[mtcn77]

Intel needs to hit the blindspot because most people have already made up their mind and their preferences just won't change... but if Intel can blindside them, they will be taken aback. People just never stop obsessing over things they cannot put into perspective, it will be in the back of their minds. So what Intel doesn't market and isn't evident by default will catch the enthusiast's attention and give them the 'real' marketing headlines. What happens is this: what people can categorise, they instantly lose interest and all that marketing material becomes obsolete. What gets sales going is word of mouth and that stems from endless debate. Just... make... it... good... in... practice. Keep them talking without doing the talking. Build a fanbase, not a marketing team.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I wanna say the loss was due to Nvidia grand scheme of damaging vendors if they sell other cards. Not sure how many of those fall into that time frame.

Half of them were actually gone before Nvidia really mattered. A lot of it due to weird mergers, like Micron buying Rendition, promising a product and then silently killing off the graphics chip business. This was around the Riva TNT/2 days.
Many of the other graphics chip companies simply gave up once 3D became a thing or went bust due to not being competitive enough.
My first PC had a graphics chip from Paradies Systems, which WD later bought and apparently then sold on to Philips.

The ones that mattered were 3Dlabs, S3 and to some extent XGI, as they were the only ones with some commercial success. Obviously 3dfx, but they went out of business ahead of the other three. I guess technically S3 Graphics is still sort of still in existence, but only if you are mad enough to buy something from VIA...

I guess it's also interesting that AMD made quite a few acquisitions that never really came close to the hype around said companies. I'm thinking about ArtX and BitBoys here, although it seems that ArtX had some involvement in the R300 which was one of the most competitive GPUs AMD ever made compared to what Nvidia offered at the time. Looks like BitBoys ended up at Qualcomm.

This is actually quite similar to Imagination Technologies purchase of Caustic Graphics, which promised real-time ray-tracing graphics. Sure, Imagination Technologies have implemented some of that into their IP, but the desktop products that were announced in 2013 never happened afaik.

Imagination Ships Caustic Series2 R2500 and R2100 Ray Tracing Accelerators

Imagination Technologies, a leading multimedia technologies company, is now shipping its Caustic Series2 PC boards, the R2500 and R2100, which accelerate PowerVR OpenRL applications including the Caustic Visualizer viewport plug-ins for Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max and the Neon viewport in...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[MrDweezil]

3rd player is great but unless they can magically supply unlimited quantities, they'll get priced up to their performance-comparable nvidia/and counterparts, regardless of msrp.

 

[Nordic]

Who isn't waiting for reviews? Of course we are waiting for reviews.

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

new question - What's their hash rate?

 

[Hardcore Games]

Intel so far has worked to perk up integrated graphics but a discrete card is a far different animal

 

[W1zzard]

new question - What's their hash rate?

hehe, i forgot about adding that option, would have been interesting to see the miner interest

 

[mtcn77]

I don't know why Intel does not deliver on solid performance increases as much as trying to distinguish their product line. Take Broadwell for instance. That could be harnessed in a way to improve ST, but no - Intel gonna use it to bring exclusive performance to their mainstream graphics. Nothing rhymes with them, me thinks. If you are going to be good at something, make it something that you can use to make others look bad. Just being good is not the perfect sales pitch. Can Intel make its rivals look bad, else why is their hurry?

 

[ThrashZone]

hehe, i forgot about adding that option, would have been interesting to see the miner interest

Hi,
Think I got low quality post on a comment I was surprised intel didn't already drop a gpu during the mining blitz so watch out lol

 

[quiq]

I think only for proffesionals or workstations not for gaming
Until for the first iterations

 

[mama]

I want to believe but with Intel I think we need to see to believe. Proof will be in the pudding as my old mother used to say.

 

[BigMack70]

I think everyone who expects this to help the GPU market regarding pricing/availability of GPUs they actually want to buy is going to be very disappointed.

These will either be mediocre/bad, or they'll be just as expensive and scarce as what AMD/Nvidia are offering.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I think everyone who expects this to help the GPU market regarding pricing/availability of GPUs they actually want to buy is going to be very disappointed.

These will either be mediocre/bad, or they'll be just as expensive and scarce as what AMD/Nvidia are offering.

Given these are being made on TSMC, it wont fix anything.

 

[TheDeeGee]

Probably gonna land in the hands of miners and scalpers, but i guess a third player is nice.

What we really need is regulations and bans.

 

[dont whant to set it"']

As I watched 'em Intel folks announce ,all they showed was an utter lack of confidence in their products ,akin to one saying along some lines :we don't know what we are doing, yet somehow it came with the job? .
Le: orthography.

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

Everyone knows that Intel is planning to have TSMC produce these, right? That means that it will do literally NOTHING to alleviate shortages, and therefore prices.

 

[KLiKzg]

Might be interesting, as it is very low on power consumption & packing a lot.

nVidia 1030 GT & similar cards should be watching this, closely.