News Intel GPUs - Falcon Shores cancelled

[Glo.]

This is kind of what I meant earlier. Is this good news?
Does 6GB on a low end card mean 12GB on a high end card?
will the two triangles per clock scale with a more powerful card or maybe the under build area will be overbuilt on the halo product.
Personally I am confused and excited by how little intel has released.

6 GB VRAM for a GPU of a GTX 1650 Super - RX 5500 XT performance levels is very good news because: it will not be limited in games, by VRAM capacity, exactly like 1650 and 1650 Super are limited by VRAM capacioty. RX 5500 XT 8 GB is currently 30% faster GPU, than GTX 1650 Super, solely because of VRAM capacity, despite the fact that at the start of the sales - 1650 Super was on par in performance, while being more efficient.

Two triangles per clock compared to RX 5500 XT - one triangle per clock means that the GPU will not be limited by Geometry performance, and on this front you can expect that you will extract all of the graphical throughput from the ALUs, ROPs, etc.

The only limiting factor is the bandwidth. However, this small GPU has unusually high amount of L2 cache for just 1024 ALUs - 4 MB.

This design is weird, for those reasons. But for those reasons I love it.

P. S. High end cards are confirmed to have 16 GB on 512 EU variant and 12 GB on 384 EU variant.

You're forgetting about driver optimizations.

Hardware capabilities are there. Its up to drivers to extract the performance from the GPU.

 

[Stuka87]

but gamers like to complain, especially about new stuff.
Amazons MMO bricking cards oh noes! Amazon sucks! When in reality it was one or two dozen cards from one manufacturer that had defects on the solder.
Coil whine is another great example. Never heard of this problem until it got a cool name “coil whine” then suddenly everyone has or has had a card with it...
I can guarantee there will be a major scandal because the colors are off in a game made in 1992 called Mr. Pinky’s Adventure.

Coil whine has been around since the advent of coils. I have worked on 40 year old equipment that had coil whine. GPU's (and PSUs) have had the issue since the 90's with the advent of GPUs.

So while I agree that people like to find reasons to complain, actual coil whine (meaning happens at 60fps) is a worthy reason to have a card replaced, as it can be really annoying. Now if it only happens on a menu screen that runs at 1000fps, thats not the cards fault.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Coil whine has been around since the advent of coils. I have worked on 40 year old equipment that had coil whine. GPU's (and PSUs) have had the issue since the 90's with the advent of GPUs.

So while I agree that people like to find reasons to complain, actual coil whine (meaning happens at 60fps) is a worthy reason to have a card replaced, as it can be really annoying. Now if it only happens on a menu screen that runs at 1000fps, thats not the cards fault.

Fair enough & well said.
Really my point is gamers like to complain, we like to have unique problems.
Many people with unique problems don’t have the problem they believe they have.
Same can be said about micro stutter and so on.

 

[Leeea]

You're forgetting about driver optimizations.

Hardware capabilities are there. Its up to drivers to extract the performance from the GPU.

Keep in mind the DG1 launched January 2021.

About those drivers:
DG1 January 2021 (unable to function):

Intel DG1 GPU Teardown, Failed Benchmarks, and Why It Won't Work on Most Systems

DG1 in the nude

www.tomshardware.com

DG1 July 2021 ( several months later ):

Intel Xe DG1 Benchmarked: Battle of the Weakling GPUs

The little engine that couldn't

www.tomshardware.com

Assassin's Creed Valhalla would frequently fade to white and show blockiness and pixelization. Here's a video of the 720p Valhalla benchmark, and the game failed to run entirely at 1080p medium on the DG1. Another major problem we encountered was with Horizon Zero Dawn, where fullscreen rendering failed but the game could run in windowed mode okay (but not borderless window either). Not surprisingly, both of those games are DX12-only, and we encountered other DX12 issues. Fortnite would automatically revert to DX11 mode when we tried to switch, and Metro Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider both crashed when we tried to run them in DX12 mode. Dirt 5 also gave low VRAM warnings, even at 720p low, but otherwise ran okay.

The DG1 for whatever reason takes a virtual eternity to compile shaders on some games — close to 30 minutes for Horizon Zero Dawn. Hopefully that's just another driver bug that needs to be squashed, but we've seen this behavior with other Intel Graphics solutions in the past, and HZD likely isn't the sole culprit.

The DG1 nearly makes it to 30 fps average, while the RX 560 is over 50% faster and the GTX 1050 is nearly double the performance. Except, the DG1 gets a bit of help by failing to run Assassin's Creed Valhalla, where it likely would have scored in the high teens.

Everything should just run, without complaint, whether it's a DX11, DX12, OpenGL, Vulkan, or even an old DX9 game — or any other application that wants to leverage the GPU. An occasional bug or glitch is one thing, but we encountered multiple issues along with some seriously slow shader compile times in our testing. Even the best graphics chip hardware won't matter much without working drivers, which is a lesson we hope Intel learned from its Larrabee days.

DG1 September 2021:

The Current State Of Intel Discrete Graphics On Linux: Almost "Fully Functional" - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

On the user-space side though with the DG1 code currently within Mesa, desktop and games are working but having "occasional crashes" and there are also known XWayland rendering problems.

In other words, the drivers are borked.

I do not see that kind of driver support being tolerated in the gamer market.

Miners on the other hand, well, occasional crashes is a bit of a deal breaker for them to.

 

[Ajay]

P. S. High end cards are confirmed to have 16 GB on 512 EU variant and 12 GB on 384 EU variant.

What exactly does "confirmed" mean?

 

[NTMBK]

Keep in mind the DG1 launched January 2021.

About those drivers:
DG1 January 2021 (unable to function):

Intel DG1 GPU Teardown, Failed Benchmarks, and Why It Won't Work on Most Systems

DG1 in the nude

www.tomshardware.com

DG1 July 2021 ( several months later ):

Intel Xe DG1 Benchmarked: Battle of the Weakling GPUs

The little engine that couldn't

www.tomshardware.com

DG1 September 2021:

The Current State Of Intel Discrete Graphics On Linux: Almost "Fully Functional" - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

In other words, the drivers are borked.

I do not see that kind of driver support being tolerated in the gamer market.

Miners on the other hand, well, occasional crashes is a bit of a deal breaker for them to.

How much of that is on the drivers, and how much is on dodgy DX12 implementations? It's more low level, more opportunities for developers to shoot themselves in the foot.

 

[NTMBK]

Keep in mind the DG1 launched January 2021.

About those drivers:
DG1 January 2021 (unable to function):

Intel DG1 GPU Teardown, Failed Benchmarks, and Why It Won't Work on Most Systems

DG1 in the nude

www.tomshardware.com

DG1 July 2021 ( several months later ):

Intel Xe DG1 Benchmarked: Battle of the Weakling GPUs

The little engine that couldn't

www.tomshardware.com

DG1 September 2021:

The Current State Of Intel Discrete Graphics On Linux: Almost "Fully Functional" - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

In other words, the drivers are borked.

I do not see that kind of driver support being tolerated in the gamer market.

Miners on the other hand, well, occasional crashes is a bit of a deal breaker for them to.

How much of that is on the drivers, and how much is on dodgy DX12 implementations? It's more low level, more opportunities for developers to shoot themselves in the foot.

 

[psolord]

Keep in mind the DG1 launched January 2021.

About those drivers:
DG1 January 2021 (unable to function):

Intel DG1 GPU Teardown, Failed Benchmarks, and Why It Won't Work on Most Systems

DG1 in the nude

www.tomshardware.com

DG1 July 2021 ( several months later ):

Intel Xe DG1 Benchmarked: Battle of the Weakling GPUs

The little engine that couldn't

www.tomshardware.com

DG1 September 2021:

The Current State Of Intel Discrete Graphics On Linux: Almost "Fully Functional" - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

In other words, the drivers are borked.

I do not see that kind of driver support being tolerated in the gamer market.

Miners on the other hand, well, occasional crashes is a bit of a deal breaker for them to.

Although this is worrisome, I'd like to think that when it comes to a whole new launch of new products, with much greater volume and audience target, they will get more serious.

Heck maybe a completely different driver team is on that.

 

[blckgrffn]

Although this is worrisome, I'd like to think that when it comes to a whole new launch of new products, with much greater volume and audience target, they will get more serious.

Heck maybe a completely different driver team is on that.

I would have thought the DG1 was a pipe cleaner project for the same set of drivers so they could get a bunch of telemetry & data on issues in the wild. If they aren't using that as way to test their delivery and performance of drivers for DG2 I would be shocked.

It doesn't matter if a game has a weird DX12 implementation if that game plays fine on nvidia and AMD cards because they have tweaked their drivers to make it work. Intel is going to be judged vs their competition, not in a vacuum.

Intel needs to catch up and compete - if they stumble hard out the gate they can take the "but the drivers" millstone that AMD has been dutifully (and at times deservedly) carrying and share that load.

 

[Shivansps]

DX12 and Vulkan are likely to have problems with unknown hardware and there is so much you can do from the driver side, as these are low level apis after all. Devs will have to go back and add Intel specific paths and optimizations, if needed. And if the game is not longer being developed, well thats too bad. Thats the price to pay for low level apis.

I would look at DX11 perf first, thats 100% drivers.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

DX12 and Vulkan are likely to have problems with unknown hardware and there is so much you can do from the driver side, as these are low level apis after all. Devs will have to go back and add Intel specific paths and optimizations, if needed. And if the game is not longer being developed, well thats too bad. Thats the price to pay for low level apis.

I would look at DX11 perf first, thats 100% drivers.

I am an amateur regarding stuff like this so excuse my ignorance.
Wouldn’t it be likely that intel would develop drive kits or game optimizations for developers as in here is a Unity/Unreal/Whatever kit to make our cards work properly, add it to your game and we will help you do it.
intel has the money and staff.

 

[Ajay]

I am an amateur regarding stuff like this so excuse my ignorance.
Wouldn’t it be likely that intel would develop drive kits or game optimizations for developers as in here is a Unity/Unreal/Whatever kit to make our cards work properly, add it to your game and we will help you do it.
intel has the money and staff.

Drivers are kind of an art and science. The reason NV has these 'game ready' driver releases, is because they had to make tweaks in their drivers because the game devs did something that killed performance. It can be that they put pressure on a previously unused API call in DX* (etc.) or that they misused some DX* call. So NV has to come to the rescue, or look like morons - whether or not the problem was their drivers.

 

[Glo.]

I am an amateur regarding stuff like this so excuse my ignorance.
Wouldn’t it be likely that intel would develop drive kits or game optimizations for developers as in here is a Unity/Unreal/Whatever kit to make our cards work properly, add it to your game and we will help you do it.
intel has the money and staff.

The thing that Intel can do is provide the hardware to the devs, and let them optimize the software for it.

Thats how things work in low-level API world.

 

[Shivansps]

I am an amateur regarding stuff like this so excuse my ignorance.
Wouldn’t it be likely that intel would develop drive kits or game optimizations for developers as in here is a Unity/Unreal/Whatever kit to make our cards work properly, add it to your game and we will help you do it.
intel has the money and staff.

Intel should be already in contact with AAA devs and game engine developers, and should have been for a while if the cards are going to released next year. But keep in mind this will only apply for new games and stuff that are still in development, already released DX12/Vulkan games may not get any updates. This is why old games may run better on DX11(if Intel cares enoght about DX11) than DX12/Vulkan on intel GPU.

 

[Ajay]

Intel should be already in contact with AAA devs and game engine developers, and should have been for a while if the cards are going to released next year. But keep in mind this will only apply for new games and stuff that are still in development, already released DX12/Vulkan games may not get any updates. This is why old games may run better on DX11(if Intel cares enoght about DX11) than DX12/Vulkan on intel GPU.

Absolutely, I forgot that part when I responded. Working with Devs to get optimal performance on your hardware (Intel in this case) is essential. Nvidia really set the bar here. Now AMD is working very hard to bridge that gap. In the past, AMD/ATi often had superior hardware, yet NV understood that that was only 1/2 the battle. John Carmack had noticed this many years ago.

 

[mikk]

According to Moore's Law Is Dead (from last week) desktop DG2 is launching Q2 2022. Wccftech is reporting the same now, so I believe it's true. Big fail after Intel confirmed a Q1 launch not long ago. Laptop DG2 is coming before desktop apparently.

 

[blckgrffn]

According to Moore's Law Is Dead (from last week) desktop DG2 is launching Q2 2022. Wccftech is reporting the same now, so I believe it's true. Big fail after Intel confirmed a Q1 launch not long ago. Laptop DG2 is coming before desktop apparently.

Haha, perhaps they'll be sitting on ships outside LA by the end of Q1. You know, so we can see them on "shelves" by the end of Q2.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Delays happen and as usual the truth is probably somewhere between Q1 & Q2.
I predict a late Q1 release but very limited inventory or only one model released, late Q2 I bet there will be a good amount released.

 

[Ajay]

Haha, perhaps they'll be sitting on ships outside LA by the end of Q1. You know, so we can see them on "shelves" by the end of Q2.

Heh, I just watch an extending news/documentary on this. It is currently insane, particularly from Asia. From not enough capacity to unload containers, or enough truckers to bring the containers to rail depots, or enough trains, or enough warehouse space.... The whole chain is backed up by 6-8 weeks longer than normal.

 

[blckgrffn]

Heh, I just watch an extending news/documentary on this. It is currently insane, particularly from Asia. From not enough capacity to unload containers, or enough truckers to bring the containers to rail depots, or enough trains, or enough warehouse space.... The whole chain is backed up by 6-8 weeks longer than normal.

Six to eight weeks is dangerously close to an entire quarter of delay!

My UPS freight info is forecasting issues until Q4 2022 is all.

Global freight is up all of 3% YoY, our ability to offload containers in the united states is essentially 100% of the worlds problem. It's nutso.

I mention it here again because we should expect issues with all Asia related goods. At least for some industries the density and value of chips maybe allows for alternate freight options.

I import via east coast, thank goodness, but it still takes us weeks to get a container after our goods are at port AND THEN we get to get in line for a boat. The last time this took an additional two weeks. AND THEN there might be a week or two delay at port on the east coast.

That's a six to eight week delay at the ports have the lowest wait times in Asia and the US.

The reality for other Asia ports and LA offload might be much worse.

 

[leoneazzurro]

Heh, I just watch an extending news/documentary on this. It is currently insane, particularly from Asia. From not enough capacity to unload containers, or enough truckers to bring the containers to rail depots, or enough trains, or enough warehouse space.... The whole chain is backed up by 6-8 weeks longer than normal.

Not only everything is delayed, but costs of transportations are insane. My company bought some equipment which is manufacturd in China. We have to transport this machine from China to Europe and we are forced to wait 6-7 weeks for transportation only, and this both by train or ship. Air freight is possible but cost has tripled compared to pre-pandemic. For this machine, we are paying 8500€ for transportation only, by air it was 40K€. Insane.

 

[uzzi38]

According to Moore's Law Is Dead (from last week) desktop DG2 is launching Q2 2022. Wccftech is reporting the same now, so I believe it's true. Big fail after Intel confirmed a Q1 launch not long ago. Laptop DG2 is coming before desktop apparently.

Well that's disappointing. Less than half a year before Navi33 which should cost similar amounts to produce per GPU.

Intel better be ready to take a loss if needed.

 

[Shivansps]

Well that's disappointing. Less than half a year before Navi33 which should cost similar amounts to produce per GPU.

Intel better be ready to take a loss if needed.

Shouldnt Navi 24 release sooner, if it releases at all? That should be a direct DG2 competitor.

 

[beginner99]

Intel better be ready to take a loss if needed.

less margins doesn't mean a loss. In current market you must do really, really poorly to actually make a loss. But yeah, intel is probably 0.5-1 year too late. Would they launch now they could have a pretty poor product in general (perfromance and performance/watt) and still make bank. Something at 3060 TI levels for a price of $500? Would sell out immediately even if it is 100% useless for mining.

 

[uzzi38]

Shouldnt Navi 24 release sooner, if it releases at all? That should be a direct DG2 competitor.

That's a DG2-128 competitor, but there's also DG2-512