News Intel GPUs - Intel launches A580

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ultimatebob

Lifer
Jul 1, 2001
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Shortly after they fix all the driver bugs... so some time in 2032?

Are the drivers really THAT bad? I mean, all they need to be able to do to have a winning card is to beat the price/performance numbers for a Radeon 6500 XT while not crashing every 30 minutes. That's a really LOW bar to hurdle... it can't be THAT hard, can it?

Intel has been making integrated graphics drivers for over a decade now, they should know what they're doing.
 
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jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
14,510
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Are the drivers really THAT bad?

For games, yes.

I mean, all they need to be able to do to have a winning card is to beat the price/performance numbers for a Radeon 6500 XT while not crashing every 30 minutes. That's a really LOW bar to hurdle... it can't be THAT hard, can it?

The "problem" is that they are going to punch much higher in raw compute power versus actual gaming frame rates, meaning that it should easily be a much higher tier as a miner than a gaming card.
 

gdansk

Golden Member
Feb 8, 2011
1,980
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Earlier in this thread there was a number of driver glitches discussed. It seems pretty bad but people tolerate that for an IGP. I doubt they would tolerate as much when it is a discrete GPU you can actually return or flip.
 

ryanjagtap

Member
Sep 25, 2021
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Intel's IGP are mostly focused on media playback capabilities so I think their DGPU game ready drivers will take time to be on par with AMD or NVIDIA drivers
 
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Insert_Nickname

Diamond Member
May 6, 2012
4,971
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Intel's IGP are mostly focused on media playback capabilities so I think their DGPU game ready drivers will take time to be on par with AMD or NVIDIA drivers

From Shivansps testing it seems the DX11 and OpenGL implementations are good to go. Which were actually what was worrying me, since backwards compatibility for older titles are important to me. The issues encountered seem to be mostly DX12/Vulkan related, so they'll undoubtedly be fixed. Even if eventually. They simply have to be for a viable gaming card in 2022.
 
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LightningZ71

Golden Member
Mar 10, 2017
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They have to for a viable competitive iGPU TODAY! While their Xe iGPU in Tiger Lake can certainly push enough pixels to push ahead of VEGA 8, the driver glitches on more modern games makes it a roll of the dice if that extra performance will actually net you a fully playable game. Yes, there are a few that do work well, but, there are also a few that are REALLY bad. Currently, I'll willingly take the slight performance hit to choose a slightly slower AMD APU for light mobile gaming over a Tiger Lake solution just to have actually working games consistently. I hope, for AMD's sake, that Rembrandt works at least as well a their current VEGA 8 solution with respect to stability and correctness of rendering.
 

IntelUser2000

Elite Member
Oct 14, 2003
8,686
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Intel has been making integrated graphics drivers for over a decade now, they should know what they're doing.

I don't think it's THAT bad, but something that might turn off a decent portion of gamers.

Only making an iGPU is part of the problem I presume. There's little incentive to improve since it can't play at decent settings anyway. And it comes pretty much "free" with people that buy a laptop so little motivation by the users to complain too much.

"Hey this laptop with iGPU has visual issues on my game!"
"That's why you should get a discrete GPU system next time"
*grumbles*

Automatically the bar will be raised by the users, thus the OEMs and retailers, thus to Intel when they start selling dGPUs.
 

LightningZ71

Golden Member
Mar 10, 2017
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That would fly if they marketed it as such...

But, they didn't.

They specifically marketed it as a better solution than AMD's APUs for both games and professional applications. It isn't consistently better, or even as good, as Vega 8 based APUs, with respect to actual production drivers for a nontrivial number of games. The hardware certainly seems capable, but the product is still somewhat lacking.

And, the real point, their history of having an iGPU in their processors, some targeted at high performance (Broadwell Iris), for going on a decade, makes their driver stumbles all the more disappointing. They have had AMPLE time to figure this out, and haven't.

Why should I trust Intel with my hard earned bottle caps over their competitors when I can see, first hand, how poor their driver efforts are? Isn't this the main gripe many have had with AMD over the years?!?! They release a card that's fundamentally unstable (5700xt) or has gobs of performance on the table (Vega56/64/7) and people praise them for "fine wine" when its really just "finally finished the drivers boss!" as the benchmarks show improving performance over the years?

Color me unimpressed...
 
Jul 27, 2020
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I'm curious too. What is nVidia's secret to getting GPU drivers right? They put their best programmers on it? Keep it at the top of their priority list? Or is it because if their drivers suck, then the whole company suffers because they are fundamentally a GPU company. I suppose that's the answer. AMD and Intel are first and foremost CPU companies so GPU has to compete with the elder CPU sibling for the parent's love, and gets neglected.
 

NTMBK

Lifer
Nov 14, 2011
10,208
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I'm curious too. What is nVidia's secret to getting GPU drivers right? They put their best programmers on it? Keep it at the top of their priority list? Or is it because if their drivers suck, then the whole company suffers because they are fundamentally a GPU company. I suppose that's the answer. AMD and Intel are first and foremost CPU companies so GPU has to compete with the elder CPU sibling for the parent's love, and gets neglected.

Nvidia has a LOT of software engineers, and they spend a lot of money on developer outreach.
 
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Hitman928

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2012
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I'm curious too. What is nVidia's secret to getting GPU drivers right? They put their best programmers on it? Keep it at the top of their priority list? Or is it because if their drivers suck, then the whole company suffers because they are fundamentally a GPU company. I suppose that's the answer. AMD and Intel are first and foremost CPU companies so GPU has to compete with the elder CPU sibling for the parent's love, and gets neglected.

It comes down to a few things. Money/manpower, experience, a good foundation, and developer relations/supprt. AMD's drivers have a solid foundation from years of experience/optimizations but have been a lot better after getting more money that they've been able to spend on more/better programmers for their drivers. I expect their developer relations will improve as well with more money to spend.

Intel has plenty of money but driver quality just hasn't been a focus for them for a long time which means that even if they spend the money now, there is a lot of ground to make up and at some point more money doesn't help speed things up. They're developer relations have been terrible on the graphics side as well so they will need to have time to develop those relationships/trust while also spending money to expand this aspect of their business. This is a very different position for Intel to be in compared to the CPU side where developers typically want to make sure their games run really well on Intel due to their market dominance. To be frank, in the past, no one really cared if games didn't work well on Intel IGPs, it was just kind of expected.

With that said, it's not like Nvidia's drivers have been perfect either, they've had their fair share of issues, but the frequency of issues is typically less historically due to the above aspects.
 

maddie

Diamond Member
Jul 18, 2010
4,723
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I'm curious too. What is nVidia's secret to getting GPU drivers right? They put their best programmers on it? Keep it at the top of their priority list? Or is it because if their drivers suck, then the whole company suffers because they are fundamentally a GPU company. I suppose that's the answer. AMD and Intel are first and foremost CPU companies so GPU has to compete with the elder CPU sibling for the parent's love, and gets neglected.
Remember, these hardware companies sometimes have to write substitute shader code when their hardware has a problem displaying the intended result. To jump into this from a relaxed position to full on competition is a really, really big task. It's not just best, but how many jobs you can do simultaneously. I have a suspicion that the hardware is the easier of the two.
 

Leeea

Diamond Member
Apr 3, 2020
3,599
5,340
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I'm curious too. What is nVidia's secret to getting GPU drivers right? They put their best programmers on it? Keep it at the top of their priority list? Or is it because if their drivers suck, then the whole company suffers because they are fundamentally a GPU company. I suppose that's the answer. AMD and Intel are first and foremost CPU companies so GPU has to compete with the elder CPU sibling for the parent's love, and gets neglected.
I have used both nvidia and amd GPUs over the years.

The latest round of GPUs, the rx6000 series, in my experience have had a first class driver experience.


I do not believe it is fair to say nvidia is superior to amd drivers any more. Both have their minor issues. Both companies frequently release Hotfix drivers, which reading the lists of things fixed make it clear neither is perfect.


The biggest difference between amd and nvidia and intel are the fixes. AMD and Nvidia fixes happen quickly. Intel fixes frequently happen never.
 

IntelUser2000

Elite Member
Oct 14, 2003
8,686
3,785
136
It's not just best, but how many jobs you can do simultaneously. I have a suspicion that the hardware is the easier of the two.

In a way yes. But lots of their "driver issues" as perceived by people have been due to their hardware. The X3000 had an issue of having a weak geometry engine, but people expected driver magic to fix it. Yes, it took them forever to get hardware T&L support, which enhanced performance and compatibility in many games but unexpected lack of performance in many others was due to having a low performance geometry engine, not crappy drivers.

You cannot fix in software what's lacking in hardware. Also until Ivy Bridge it had an issue where it would be stuck at a lower graphics Turbo rating in some random scenarios. These are major issues I can remember at the top of my head. There were(are?) many other small issues arising due to lack of hardware, not drivers.

It's only very recently, and I mean maybe Icelake, maybe Tigerlake where the hardware is at a decent state.

Intel has plenty of money but driver quality just hasn't been a focus for them for a long time which means that even if they spend the money now, there is a lot of ground to make up and at some point more money doesn't help speed things up.

Oftentimes it's the companies with lots of financial resources that skimp the most. Seems ironic isn't it? However if you think about it, they made that money by optimizing squeezing every penny and not spending a dime extra more than what's needed. These guys think just like how their products behave - only active when necessary and go to sleep as soon as it's not needed.

Up until very recently Intel probably wanted graphics to be like HD Audio, where minimal functionality + little more was all that's needed so people can focus on CPUs again and all is fine in Intel-land. They probably didn't expect that it's not only going to be a threat, but something they can make money on.

I am a firm believer that their drivers will improve at a much faster pace once the real dGPUs are on the market. Nothing, I mean nothing beats real world experience. They aren't in the GPU market until they are in the GPU market, period.

I think they are finally at a state where they are truly ready to be a competitor - if they wish to stick to it despite hardships they will experience.
 
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Jul 27, 2020
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But lots of their "driver issues" as perceived by people have been due to their hardware.
Super agree. Like for DG2, leaked benchmarks suggest that they probably blew a good portion of their transistor budget on maximizing higher precision compute power that is required more in the data center than in gaming. They are trying to hit two birds with one stone. Consequently, their gaming performance may not be as good if they had focused solely on it in their GPU's design.
 

ryanjagtap

Member
Sep 25, 2021
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Super agree. Like for DG2, leaked benchmarks suggest that they probably blew a good portion of their transistor budget on maximizing higher precision compute power that is required more in the data center than in gaming. They are trying to hit two birds with one stone. Consequently, their gaming performance may not be as good if they had focused solely on it in their GPU's design.
Maybe that's just Raja's influence that they're making compute oriented GPUs. I like the GPUs segmented for gaming and data center separate, like AMD did with RDNA and CDNA as well as Nvidia does with geforce and quadro lines. Helps in differentiating product stacks and target audience.
 
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Jan 12, 2021
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Maybe that's just Raja's influence that they're making compute oriented GPUs. I like the GPUs segmented for gaming and data center separate, like AMD did with RDNA and CDNA as well as Nvidia does with geforce and quadro lines. Helps in differentiating product stacks and target audience.
But is not separate, Xe-HPG and Xe-HPC?
 
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psolord

Golden Member
Sep 16, 2009
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I'm curious too. What is nVidia's secret to getting GPU drivers right? They put their best programmers on it? Keep it at the top of their priority list? Or is it because if their drivers suck, then the whole company suffers because they are fundamentally a GPU company. I suppose that's the answer. AMD and Intel are first and foremost CPU companies so GPU has to compete with the elder CPU sibling for the parent's love, and gets neglected.

Jensen is turning his old leather jackets into leather whips and hits them if they do anything stupid! +100 boss imbued damage! xD
 

moinmoin

Diamond Member
Jun 1, 2017
4,934
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What is nVidia's secret to getting GPU drivers right?
Jensen sees Nvidia as a software company first. Source from over a decade ago:
More recently reiterated as "NVIDIA is a software-defined company today":