News Intel GPUs - Battlemage rumoured cancelled (again)

[igor_kavinski]

Intel Gets Hogwarts Legacy Running On Linux Driver By Pretending Not To Be Intel Graphics - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

Hope this masquerading option comes to the ARC Windows drivers too. Would be particularly interesting to see what kind of optimizations games turn on (or off) when they detect a certain vendor.

 

[Hitman928]

Intel Gets Hogwarts Legacy Running On Linux Driver By Pretending Not To Be Intel Graphics - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

Hope this masquerading option comes to the ARC Windows drivers too. Would be particularly interesting to see what kind of optimizations games turn on (or off) when they detect a certain vendor.

This is kind of funny. It’s not that pretending to be another vendor turns on AMD/NV optimizations that were artificially blocked from Intel GPUs, which is the case previously with AMD CPUs and Intel optimized software. Rather, pretending to be another vendor turns off the hardware accelerated XESS code path which is broken in Linux. So, in order to avoid their own broken features, they pretend to be a different vendor to get the game to turn them off. Glad they found a work around, but the solution is pretty humorous.

 

[igor_kavinski]

It’s not that pretending to be another vendor turns on AMD/NV optimizations that were artificially blocked from Intel GPUs

I was thinking about the interesting stuff that could be found with especially Geforce sponsored games if such an option were exposed in the ARC Windows drivers.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Is fixing XESS in Linux an option?

 

[Aapje]

Is fixing XESS in Linux an option?

Now don't go saying crazy things.

 

[H433x0n]

Looks like Battlemage will have 2 dies, with the top die being equivalent to ACM-G10 (Arc A770). Battlemage could perform at 4070 Ti tier of performance (or greater) if it does end up being 400mm^2 of N4 silicon over a 256bit memory bus.

source

 

[Dayman1225]

Intel has released a new driver improving DX11 performance quite a bit in a wide range of games and a new update/beta for PresentMon for performance analysis

Intel Arc Graphics - DX11 & Intel PresentMon Beta

We’re rolling out DirectX 11 driver updates to bring more performance to PC gamers and releasing a new tool to help enthusiasts and the community measure and evaluate performance of their systems. Prepare to geek out!

game.intel.com

 

[Heartbreaker]

This is kind of funny. It’s not that pretending to be another vendor turns on AMD/NV optimizations that were artificially blocked from Intel GPUs, which is the case previously with AMD CPUs and Intel optimized software. Rather, pretending to be another vendor turns off the hardware accelerated XESS code path which is broken in Linux. So, in order to avoid their own broken features, they pretend to be a different vendor to get the game to turn them off. Glad they found a work around, but the solution is pretty humorous.

Weird. Why would XESS be running automatically? It's an optional upscaling path.

 

[linkgoron]

Weird. Why would XESS be running automatically? It's an optional upscaling path.

It's not automatic, it's running fine on Windows.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Intel Cuts Some R&D Positions in California to Reduce Costs

www.anandtech.com

To provide further specifics, the layoffs include 10 GPU software development engineers, eight system software development engineers, six cloud software engineers, six product marketing engineers, and six system-on-chip design engineers.

That's not gonna help, Pat. That's not gonna help you at all!

 

[igor_kavinski]

Stable Diffusion Optimized for Intel Silicon Boosts Arc A770 Performance by 54%

Create AI-generated images even faster

www.tomshardware.com

Intel ARC sales may pick up steam!



A750 is looking really good here.

 

[Aapje]

This is exactly the kind of card you expect to do well for the price, as it has to be priced cheaply relative to the power of the hardware, because the drivers aren't that good. But optimizing just one use case (Stable diffusion) is relatively easy, so there the card can actually perform to the level of its hardware.

 

[NTMBK]

Intel Cuts Some R&D Positions in California to Reduce Costs

www.anandtech.com

That's not gonna help, Pat. That's not gonna help you at all!

Doesn't exactly feel like they're investing in the GPU business :/

 

[beginner99]

Doesn't exactly feel like they're investing in the GPU business :/

True but then they don't need to beat a 4090. All they need is the best deal in the $300-$500 space to fill up their factories.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

True but then they don't need to beat a 4090. All they need is the best deal in the $300-$500 space to fill up their factories.

And that is a reasonable goal to have as a new player in the game

 

[Kepler_L2]

True but then they don't need to beat a 4090. All they need is the best deal in the $300-$500 space to fill up their factories.

But their GPUs aren't using Intel nodes?

 

[DrMrLordX]

But their GPUs aren't using Intel nodes?

They likely never will.

 

[beginner99]

But their GPUs aren't using Intel nodes?

Not yet. But I think that was the plan. Without using own fabs it indeed doesn't seem to make much sense.

 

[beginner99]

They likely never will.

Why? And if not why even make entirely level gpus which would be perfect as a fab filler?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Why? And if not why even make entirely level gpus which would be perfect as a fab filler?

They don't have the excess capacity they expected, and

if past products are any indicator, their nodes aren't working well for GPUs for some reason (Ponte Vecchio was moved entirely off Intel nodes, and Intel is moving aggressively to take N3 wafers for GPUs etc.).

 

[igor_kavinski]

their nodes aren't working well for GPUs for some reason (Ponte Vecchio was moved entirely off Intel nodes, and Intel is moving aggressively to take N3 wafers for GPUs etc.).

No leaks regarding what the actual reason could be? They've been putting out iGPUs on the same silicon slab as the CPU for decades. What changes when it's just GPU on the silicon?

 

[DrMrLordX]

No leaks regarding what the actual reason could be? They've been putting out iGPUs on the same silicon slab as the CPU for decades. What changes when it's just GPU on the silicon?

You got me. Nobody from Intel is saying why they ripped Intel 7 and Intel 4 out of Ponte Vecchio (I think they use one of the 10nm node variants for the interposer or whatever, but nothing else). Pretty sure Meteor Lake iGPU is on a TSMC node, and it looks all of Arrow Lake's iGPUs will be TSMC as well.

Battlemage will also probably be on TSMC.

The only node they seem to have significant capacity for right now is Intel 7 or Super 7 or whatever you want to call the latest 10nm iteration (10ESF+?). And they have already demonstrated that they would rather use N6 for GPU/iGPU over that node.

 

[Heartbreaker]

Why? And if not why even make entirely level gpus which would be perfect as a fab filler?

IMO, Intel is far enough behind on GPUs that they can't handicap GPU efforts by using less than top process, and they are still behind on process.

If/when they truly catch up to TSMC on process, they can do GPU on their in house process.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Nobody from Intel is saying why they ripped Intel 7 and Intel 4 out of Ponte Vecchio

Possibly because of horrible power efficiency and the GPU thermal throttling without water cooling or something.

 

[beginner99]

The only node they seem to have significant capacity for right now is Intel 7 or Super 7 or whatever you want to call the latest 10nm iteration (10ESF+?). And they have already demonstrated that they would rather use N6 for GPU/iGPU over that node.

So bascially still the same issue with new processes not yielding high enough with larger dies. If there newer processes would actually work I doubt they would go with TSMC.