The Day I've been WAITING for (in Intel News)--NEW update! Battlemage coming out Dec 12 & 13th!

And now here we go…the first real indication of the Intel Xe Linux driver for modern Graphics hardware…I’ve been waiting for this since I bought my Arc A750…

This will open the field up a bit…we now really have another choice instead of just nVidia or AMD for video cards…the next thing I’m waiting for is the DG3 Battlemage cards to come out (Sometime next year…crossing fingers).

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That’s really cool, i hope they will get really competitive as soon as it is possible, so we all can benefit on good stuff! :partying_face:

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I actually think the Intel resurgence will simply remove AMD from the pecking order and it’s sad.

It’s a pity TSMC got locked down by Apple (and to some extent Qualcomm). AMD was never able to supply retail with meaningful numbers and as such there have never been any serious laptop models out. They’ve gained a lot of lucrative server-side market share, but not much in retail.

The “nice” models (e.g. XPS line in Dell, ProArt in ASUS, etc) had to rely on Intel these years because AMD simply couldn’t supply enough chips…

It’s nice to see Intel back, but I would’ve preferred it if AMD had made a bit more inroads during this time…

Why?
I assume because Intel has more money for those TSMC?

Wonderful news. Prices are reasonable for those GPUs and drivers inside the kernel! :penguin:

Well—that remains to be seen…I’m still stung from the astronomical prices of video cards in the last few years…anything that shakes up the market & gives more choice to buyers is a win in my book. The Battlemage DG3 series is “supposed to” be aimed squarely at the mid-to-upper market…I suspect they will expand the line to include the low-end offering & try to go head-to-head with the cards slotted in the RTX 4080 range ( the highest profit market segment).

Anything that knocks nVidia down a couple of notches is good by me.

let’s see how it plays out, but my “hopes” for this driver are not great. On Windows the cards ARE already using the driver they intend to use since release day, and performance there is not great either, at least not when you see where Intel positioned the cards - their performance is always at least one bracket under where it should have been according to the announcement and the price.

see my response above your quote. If it stays that way, Intel will fail (again) on the GPU market. After all, they only poached the people from AMD that were responsible for the “failed” AMD cards xD (Fury cough)

I agree that prices are astronomical, but that already leads to Nvidia losing market share to AMD because AMD’s prices are more reasonable. Nvidia so far has only shown that they do not intend to change prices no matter the competition, and they still make more then enough profit with their fanboys and people that need CUDA.

Here is the latest news…It is looking like the Goalpost has moved for me…I need GPU compute also…so Kernel 6.9 is the “new” starting point…

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iirc you would like to use your 750 on BOINC …
I will follow diligently your posts as I could engage the 2 Arc 380 when time comes. :abacus:

The A750 works very well for “some” of the BOINC GPU units…SRBase requires the Xe driver, but most of the others just need Intel Compute to work correctly. You could jump in now…the A750 cards are bottomed out on eBay ($150 average), so now is as good a time as any & if you want a better card…wait until Battlemage comes out before buying a new card…

I REALLY want to game & use compute in the BOINC projects…so for right now I’m still with the i915 driver…as soon as I can test drive the Xe…I’ll report about it.

I’ll probably switch back & forth in the 6.8 kernel…will be (possibly) a bummer (will have to do an include option on the kernel line), but I want to see the performance in games with the Xe…Phoronix will be posting tests most likely in the next few weeks…and that will determine when I start using Xe.

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Thank you for the info. I will check if MilkyWay@home can use the Arc 380.
Still, the other companies have astonishing prices on some of their GPUs … it’s quite unreasonable for my use … will not buy any of them in the future. Take care; see you down the log :wave:

Milkyway is one of the ones I’ve posted on the forums asking for Intel GPU units…they don’t have Intel units at present, but I hope that they might in the future…(they don’t have N-body for GPUs, but that doesn’t prevent for other work units)…See my post here: https://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/forum_thread.php?id=5039#76360

I’m not sure if FP64 will be included in the Xe driver…

More Info: it “looks” like it is/will be a part of the Xe driver…this is an older posting from the Intel Windows forums…so we can hope: https://community.intel.com/t5/GPU-Compute-Software/Double-precision-floating-point-on-Iris-Xe-MAX/td-p/1396827

OK–the very first Benckmarks are in for the Xe driver…as I expected…not great, but what I am looking for is what the next 6 months look like…So, we’ll see…

Anyway…here is what Phoronix got with a first test: https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-xe-benchmark

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I know I’ve been a bit slow about news for the Xe driver…not much has really changed. The current testing point for Xe will be with the 6.8 (for adventurous souls) or 6.9 kernel series.

Some interesting tidbits…

And just for the newer laptops & the upcoming BattleMage cards…

Overviews that are an interesting read…

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I don’t think the current Intel Arc cards are great but i do think they are heading in the right direction. Can’t say they are bad though either. I just think they have a ways to go. But i would consider buying them also.

Edit: I’ve only owned one nvidia card (GTX 1060) in my lifetime and it’s been okay but i would not likely buy another.

Well…as soon as 6.8 hits I’ll take a shot at running the Xe driver…may be a “bumpy” ride—but I tend to take some risks. I’ve got my backup install ready if things “blow up”.

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Definitely will be taking a look at the new Battlemage line of Intel GPU’s. I am currently happy with my current setup but I may try to get another build with ARC and LGA1200. Let us know if your journey with the Xe driver goes well @ExDebianuser

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You got it…My current build is a ROG Z790-H with an Arc A750…Plays everything I want (I use Steam) at fairly good FPS. I’ve watched the i915 driver really improve over the last 3~4 months…but I know that the A750 is limited is some ways—both with the current driver & will be with the Xe driver…since I mostly game (no video encoding) with this computer…I think that the Xe driver will be “interesting” to experience.

I plan to get a BattleMage card shortly after they launch…will be looking at the equivalent of the A750.

Gave it quick shot with 6.8-rc7 on an A750. Plasma 6 kwin wasn’t happy about it: low framerate, didn’t properly start and crashing after a few seconds. But there was an image!

Squarely in what you would expect for a first, “experimental” implementation.

I was rather angry when Intel announced that Arc is considered legacy and is never going to be officially supported by Xe. On the other hand i915 is a solid daily driver now. Xe probably needs two years to mature and match i915 anyway. Xe may receive new features, but there will also be new bugs. New plan: skip Battlemage and jump on its successor using Xe.

About what I thought…I’m waiting for the “official” Kernel to arrive & will test then…I was really not happy with the Intel stance on that either…but I bought the A750 on eBay for a song & sold my RTX3070 for a very good price…so I didn’t get hurt… I do plan to go with BattleMage—I know, I’m impatient :slight_smile:

And more good stuff!!! https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer