Good evening, 
New offerings for economically priced GPUs from Intel are hitting the stores.
If you are in need of a 100% free driver supported GPU directly in the kernel, the a580 will be stronger than the a380 and a bit cheaper the the 750 and 770 and you also have the a310 as a good starter.
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/227961.html
https://asrock.com/Graphics-Card/Intel/Intel%20Arc%20A580%20Challenger%208GB%20OC/
Good reading 
The moreāthe betterā¦Iām a happy A750 user (would really want an A770, but the A750 is pretty good)ā¦Will be MUCH better with the next couple of kernels ā6.6 will be the āStartā of the Xe driver for these cards & 6.7 should see a nice, āmostlyā done Xe driver. Canāt waitā¦
Interesting, but I would like to know the following:
Hello!
My current experience is with 2 machines that have the a380, used for display on pcie 4.0 (the card can be installed on 3.0 or 4.0)
The speed of the rendering of the graphical environment is very fast. The drivers have been available since I was on a minimum of a 6.2 kernel and up.
I donāt have experience for h.264, h.265 and av1 to share 
From specs: a580 ā (Intel link)
TBP 185 W (Total Board Power (TBP) represents the total power draw of a graphics card or other add-in card in watts, when it is operating under a typical load such as a gaming workload. The TBP value corresponds to Intelās reference design. Intelās partners may choose to productize Intel-based solutions with higher TBP values.)
Features
H.264 Hardware Encode/Decode Yes
H.265 (HEVC) Hardware Encode/Decode Yes
AV1 Encode/Decode Yes
VP9 Bitstream & Decoding Yes
edit: examples (USA)
I donāt have numbers for what you are asking, but Phoronix has done testingāhere is the link to the Intel articles page: https://www.phoronix.com/linux/Intel
The Arc cards ātendā to be more power-hungry than AMD or Nvidiaā¦but from what Iāve see so far, they are getting ātamedā rather quicklyā¦Intel developers are being very aggressive in getting both the i915 (old) and Xe (new) drivers in shape.
I would very much look forward to this (A750), but thereās a big hair in the Xe soup:
YesāI read about that problemā¦Iām mostly a gamer, so not much worry to meā¦but to someone doing encoding/audio work it will be a problem. Iāve heard quite a number of people call out Intel about this, so I would āthinkā that a workaround will be done (but you never know)ā¦Iām sure they wonāt make that mistake with the 2nd generation cards (DG3/Battlemage). I expect we will see the Battlemage cards in the first half of next yearā¦looking forward to themā¦kindāa glad I didnāt buy the A770 & went for the A750ā¦got it for under $200 USā¦so Iāll be in good shape for the BattleMage version of the A770.
Yeah, if you donāt expect extended gaming support in the future than the i915 driver is fine. Itās for me. The card works great for any non-gaming Linux tasks with i915 here.
I was so fed up with AMD that I got the A750 when it was still much more expensive (340 Euro). There was a time when I regretted not getting the A770 for a few bucks more afterwards. The Xe-driver news moderated that notion considerably though.
Iāve been looking around: https://www.techradar.com/computing/gpu/intel-spotted-gearing-up-with-a-powerful-battlemage-gpu-to-take-on-nvidia-and-amd-next-year
I have been very happy with my A750 & glad I didnāt put out the extra $$$ for the A770ā¦Looks like another about 9 months to BattleMageā¦Sooner would be BETTER for me, but I can put $$$ aside for itā¦looks like GDDR6X memory & enough power to go head to head with the RTX4070ā¦I think Iād be able to go with $399 US as a top priceā¦Would be nice to see it in that range.
As the Intel drivers are changing quite rapidly - Howās the gaming at this moment? Asking 'cause reports on other forums are mixed with some saying DX12 is completely borked and others saying gaming is fine.
I was eyeing the A770 16G as itās very similarly priced to the A750 here, whereas any relevant AMD rdna3 GPU is a lot more expensive. I am currently running Nvidia 3060, which was fine as long as I had CUDA requirement due to work, but now my workload is mainly gaming w/ steam/proton, and occasional scientific computing and video encoding, which looks to be adequately supported by Intel, at least for my use.
Okā¦It really depends on the gameā¦I have one newer game that is not playing at all, butā¦there is going to be a BIG change soon.
Right now Arc cards are using the old i915 driverā¦true it has been upgraded Massively in the last year, but itās still an old-style driver. The new driver is in the works & crossing fingers we will be seeing it early next year with the 6.8 kernel series. I really felt good about where the new Xe driver is heading after I read this: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-FDINFO-Mem-Linux-6.8
Yes, Intel Arc drivers are a moving target, but as soon as the Xe driver is stable I think that gaming will be much better. It looks like it will be an opt-in process to use the Xe driverā¦manual edit-out the i915 & edit-in the Xe driver & then reboot.
I see that you do Video encoding alsoā¦that is going to be the āstickyā problem with the first-generation Arc cardsā¦the i915 driver will be better for encoding & the Xe driver will be Much better for gaming & computing work (I use BOINC & have been waiting for the Xe driver)ā¦The next-generation cards will not have this problemā¦Iāve got an A750 & will be moving to the BattleMage cards when they are available.
Here is the other article you need to read: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Xe-DRM-Submission-Nears
Now, I want to see the second-generation Arc cards!!!
Thanks! This cleared up multiple things I was wondering. It was a tad bit difficult to get a clear view of this situation as forum posts regarding Arc age quickly, and many contain opinions based on rumors and hearsay. Like DX12 support in proton, HUC support, and rumors regarding Xe drivers, with some posts saying Xe wonāt be updated to support DG2(Alchemist) fully. But this may be given as the cards are still relatively new, and the user base is small compared to AMD/Nvidia.
I might also wait for BattleMage, which would give drivers a bit more time to mature and the 6.8 kernel release to be closer.
If you are in the market for a new video cardā¦I would wait for the next generationā¦I was sick of the BS involved with Nvidia cards & just jumped into the Arc cardsā¦Itās been a learning curve, but Iām glad I made the moveābeing able to use Wayland without jumping through hoops was a real plusā¦
Gaming is still an issue. Personal experience: I play older games, mostly picking them up on Steam sales. The goal is to hit 1080p 60fps on High/Ultra and that is mostly no issue on DX11.
I think I got my first DX12 title recently with Horizon Zero Dawn, and the performance on Linux is a lot worse compared to Windows. Linux was 1080p 40 to 60 fps on High while Windows gave a solid 60 fps on 4k with quality scaling.
Intel Arc is fantastic for productivity work in my experience. The i915 driver is stable, video encoding and decoding support is top notch, I would even argue machine learning is in a better state than mid/low range AMD cards.
But. If gaming is important to you I wouldnāt recommend it if you canāt at least occasionally fall back on Windows. And since the upcoming Xe driver seems to be intended as āexperimentalā forever and never become āfeature completeā I would not suggest buying on the promise of potential future improvements, only āas isā.
Thanks, great information.
Seems that for my use case at this moment, Arc would not be the best option. The main problem is that since The great plague of 2020, all the work and studies have been remote for which my PCās double for both gaming and work. Arcās features for productivity looks to be excellent, but the gaming part is a problem. Nvidia was āfineā, but there have been multiple moments where I really relate to Torvaldās statement from Aalto University. Gotta see if I can get AMD rdna3 partly reimbursed as it has AI acceleration that can be used in my workload 
Or just wait and see how BattleMage goes.
Windows is total no go for me. I did use it mainly instead of Linux for ~6 years, but after losing work 2 years ago due to forced system update that started while I was away from the PC I vowed not to touch it again.
Hello! 
The baby arc Intel 310 is being tested in one of the machines for 3 days now. 
Source:
Price feels a bit hi for now ā¦ I recommend to wait a bit if you want to try it
It works great out of the box on PCI e 4. On a AsRock B660 micro atx motherboard and i3 12100f.
Drivers from the kernel 6.6 lts are well loaded on booting EndeavousOS.
The kit comes with two brackets. The change to the longer one for a regular PC case only needs 3 screws and done in a few seconds.
Rated at 50 watts. Takes itās current from the motherboard.
Take care
P.S. price comparison from the arc intel 380 (more powerful), less expensive.
Good morning everyone 
Just a quick update for the a310; the prices are coming down.
Now at: $170.40
If you ever want / need to try a baby arc Intel
Take care
I see those small cheap GPU and think what are they for?
Like if I need something that small, why not just use the internal GPU? I feel like the GPU is go big or go bigger.
Edit: Canadian price is $179; USA is $119
I totally agree Derek. If one has the internal GPU ā like my Ryzen 7600x, then it fulfills the need, I would not by it.
Hereās my thinking:
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119 us dollars is good
Hope you enjoyed the Daytona 500 yesterday
