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Intel Arc A380 review - competing at the bottom of the stack

winjer

Gold Member
Oh no doubt, I acknowledge that Vega 64 was inferior to 1080/TI design.

But 56 is better than 1070 design. Remember also that Vega has async compute, which can help in modern titles compared to pascal i.e. rainbow six siege, Wolfenstein 2 etc. Turing finally got async compute.

In general it has looked like this amd design did better on the lower tier cards, and didn't scale well with power usage/die size on the higher end stuff.

But the Vega 56 is just a cut down Vega 64. AMD basically cut 8 CUs. Meaning 14% less units.
The GTX 1070, is a cut down from the GTX 1080. 20 vs 15 SMs. That is 33% fewer units.
Despite this, the Vega 56 is only 6% faster.

The Vega cards are underperforming for how many transistors and how much energy it uses.

Then look at power consumption.
My previous numbers for the Vega 64 were not exactly correct. I posted the power saving bios.

power_average.png
 
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But the Vega 56 is just a cut down Vega 64. AMD basically cut 8 CUs. Meaning 14% less units.
The GTX 1070, is a cut down from the GTX 1080. 20 vs 15 SMs. That is 33% fewer units.
Despite this, the Vega 56 is only 6% faster.

The Vega cards are underperforming for how many transistors and how much energy it uses.

Then look at power consumption.
My previous numbers for the Vega 64 were not exactly correct. I posted the power saving bios.

power_average.png
Fair enough, pascal is better.

Still, Vega 56 was good enough to make Nvidia react, and in certain titles the edge is way above 6%.
 

PhoenixTank

Member
Honestly, I think if the price drops a little bit from suggested, this might be very well suited as a media GPU for transcodes in a (SFF) dedicated HTPC/Plex/Media Server. With AMD's low end 6500/6400 chips having no media encode capabilities, alongside no AV1 decode, they're ill suited to the market. Nvidia's 1630 is more capable in that respect for encode but no AV1 decode/encode because the NVENC is from Volta (I think?). Feels like a slap to the low end.
A380 in theory checks the boxes:
  • PCIE bus power
  • H.264, H.265, AV1 decode and encode
  • Lowish price
If the existing quicksync software libraries work already or are easily adapted that'd round it out nicely.
GN mentioned they'd have a look at media capabilities for it so I'm intrigued to hear how that goes.

Edit: Or maybe an A310 🤔 Didn't know that existed.

SZNt207.jpg


(From https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-a...cing-leaks-out-arc-a770-for-less-than-400-usd )
 
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Melon Husk

Member
So it competes with the 1050ti. That's great! Competition in the sub $200 range GPUs has been non-existent for ... 5 years?
 
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winjer

Gold Member
Those Intel drivers are incredibly bad.
Yes, it's Intel's first dedicated GPU in decades, but Intel has been making IGPs for many years now.

 

Skifi28

Member
it's Intel's first dedicated GPU in decades, but Intel has been making IGPs for many years now.

Makes you really think. Maybe all these crappy intle igpus could have been half-decent (relatively speaking) if they could have been bothered all these years.
 

winjer

Gold Member

The launch of Intel ARC has been a catastrophe ever since the first boards were released in China. While Intel is full force damage control trying to get some of that R&D money back with lots of SKUs, dark clouds are hovering their GPUs.

Intel's release is not only mismanaged by a complete media blackout aside from some US-based media (EU media has been completely blocked with no communication whatsoever on ARC), restricting the products to China, bug riddled software, and mediocre performance. Igor's Lab says Intel's Arc graphics cards are pretty much doomed.

The board partners are causing the greatest difficulties. According to their sources, at least one major AIB is ending Arc graphics card manufacture "because to quality problems." and whatever that means is unclear.

Intel's Arc Alchemist discrete GPUs haven't been a success. Most tech journalists have been cautious and sympathetic with Intel's new consumer business, especially because graphics cards were scarce.

"At least one" large AIB has chosen to stop making Intel Arc graphics cards. Wallossek said this move is unrelated to the other concerns. We still haven't seen any products released from Asus, Gigabyte, or MSI, the main three AIBs. ASRock's Arc A380 product pages and China retail availability debuted yesterday.

To say that Arch is a mess would be an understatement.

Scared On Fire GIF by SpongeBob SquarePants
 
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