Intel responds to graphics card crisis, promises to ship millions of Arc Alchemist GPUs

[midian182]

What just happened? Intel executives Pat Gelsinger and Raja M. Koduri have responded to an open letter pleading for team blue to lead the industry out of the graphics card crisis. Koudri, the SVP of Intel’s architecture, graphics, and software (IAGS) division, promised “millions” of Arc GPUs every year, while the company’s CEO tweeted a simple “we are on it.”

The open letter comes from PC Gamer’s Dave James, who cites the familiar problem of supply chain issues and crypto mining leading to low supply combined with huge demand, resulting in scalpers snapping up cards to resell them at double the MSRP, and retail outlets increasing their prices.

James also highlights a point many have been asking: once supply does improve and mining demand dies down, will AMD and Nvidia be willing to lower the pricing structure of their chips to pre-crisis levels, given how much money they are making from the situation right now?

Koduri was the first to reply to the article. His weekend tweet acknowledged that the graphics card mess “is a huge issue for PC gamers and the industry at large,” adding that Intel is working hard to get “millions of Arc GPUs into the hands of PC gamers every year.”

I am with you, too @pcgamer. We are on it. https://t.co/i1BRRwrv6S

— Pat Gelsinger (@PGelsinger) January 29, 2022

Gelsinger followed with a message of his own. “I am with you, too,” he tweeted. “We are on it.”

It’s good to hear company bosses acknowledging the problems being faced by PC fans who are sick of this seemingly unending crisis, but talk, of course, is cheap; Nvidia has already said it will improve the supply of graphics cards in the second half of the year, which will likely coincide with the launch of its RTX 4000 Lovelace series.

Moreover, will Koudri and Gelsinger even be able to live up to their promises? Intel is tapping TSMC and its 6nm process node for Arc Alchemist, which restricts the number of GPUs it can produce—not forgetting that TSMC is hiking its prices this year. Plus, there's the lack of a mining limiter on Intel’s cards, scalpers aren’t going away, and we’ll have to wait until Q2 (hopefully) to see how the desktop versions of Arc Alchemist stack up against the equivalent cards from rivals Nvidia and AMD.

(Click to expand)

There have been some recent rays of hope suggesting the GPU market is starting to turn around. Graphics card prices in Europe are finally trending downwards after being on the rise from around August to December, crypto prices are falling, there’s Ethereum’s upcoming shift from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining consensus to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), and the average selling price of cards on eBay is coming down. Let's hope Alchemist helps things as much as Gelsinger and Koudri claim.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/93189-intel-responds-graphics-card-crisis-promises-ship-millions.html

 

[psycros]

Intel's leap into the graphics card biz was never about anything BUT mining. I can promise you that their cards will be easily optimized for it.

 

[Dimitrios]

Save my comment and look back one year. INTEL cards will be favored more by miners, low end gaming and OEM. INTEL can charge cheap to gamers but what is the point if the drivers aren't that great?

mid to high end gamers probably will hold on till INTEL drivers get more mature or wait for AMD/Nvidia has cards available to gamers.

 

[brucek]

If Intel is ultimately competing for the same fabs that Nvidia and AMD are, what's the net gain to customers? If the early Arc cards are inferior to Nvidia's and AMD's (hardware and/or software) you might say gamers are actually worse off.

The opportunity for net supply increase was if Intel could bring its own fabs to the table. Maybe one day...

 

[Puiu]

If Intel is ultimately competing for the same fabs that Nvidia and AMD are, what's the net gain to customers? If the early Arc cards are inferior to Nvidia's and AMD's (hardware and/or software) you might say gamers are actually worse off.

The opportunity for net supply increase was if Intel could bring its own fabs to the table. Maybe one day...

More competition is never bad. This is how most markets get better prices and higher quality products with new features

 

[HardReset]

[HEADING=3]midian182 Three misspellings: Koudri should be Koduri.[/HEADING]

 

[Irata]

Imho, I don‘t doubt these claims but I believe the large majority will end up in OEM desktop and laptop systems. That‘s still a way to get them into gamers‘ hands and on the plus side, the nVidia based cards they replace might end up in retail.


In order to sell more ADL CPU, Intel needs more decently priced graphics cards in the market. The 12600 and below are not selling that well and I believe it comes down to: What GPU do you use for your budget gaming system with e.g. a 12400 ? There‘s no point getting a great value CPU when you have to get an overpriced graphics card to go with it ?

 

[Farkinell]

Intel's leap into the graphics card biz was never about anything BUT mining. I can promise you that their cards will be easily optimized for it.

You think Intel, with their vast and diversified portfolio really cares about crypto mining? As one of the major blue chip companies, they're not investing all this time and R&D resource to sell a few thousand cards to soon-to-be shut down Russian mining farms. They're doing this because they want a slice of the $180bn gaming market. The card maybe good for mining, but that doesn't mean that's what they were designed to do.

 

[nodfor]

Too little, too late.

 

[Squid Surprise]

"there’s Ethereum’s upcoming shift from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining consensus to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), "

Techspot (and many others) have been saying this for ages... anyone relying on that to happen any time soon better not be holding their breath....

 

[Theinsanegamer]

If Intel is ultimately competing for the same fabs that Nvidia and AMD are, what's the net gain to customers? If the early Arc cards are inferior to Nvidia's and AMD's (hardware and/or software) you might say gamers are actually worse off.

The opportunity for net supply increase was if Intel could bring its own fabs to the table. Maybe one day...

I admit I'd be a lot mroe excited if these were on 10nm superfin instead of competing for what TSMC can still offer, but it's not just process nodes that are limited. TSMC has a higher capacity now then they did in 2019 yet the number of GPUs sold is several million lower.

Restrictions in shipping, substrates for PCBs, ad components like VRMs and capacitors all play a factor.

"there’s Ethereum’s upcoming shift from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining consensus to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), "

Techspot (and many others) have been saying this for ages... anyone relying on that to happen any time soon better not be holding their breath....

I dont know why they keep repeating this. It's boy calling wolf, etherium will never go PoS.

 

[wiyosaya]

Have there been any review of these cards yet? To me, this sounds like more sIntel Hubris - announcing they are going to help resolve shortages when we don't even know how well any of their cards perform. Let's wait for the reviews, sIntel, before you continue tooting your horn as a resolution to the current GPU shortage.

IMO, sIntel, your reputation is bad enough already; but be my guest. Make your reputation even worse.

 

[3ogdy]

It's not often that I see someone pose with such a fake and forced smile for the camera.
Even his index finger is showing it.

Now, on to GPUs. If Intel manages to be competitive in the market, this is great news for us. I think their GPUs will probably appear as "not optimized" on the surface, but they'll be very easy to optimize for mining.

What Intel needs (and desperately) is market share. Mining is going to be their golden ticket to get that.
They've always had that "money first, customers second" attitude as far as I can remember, so I have no doubt what their GPUs will be good at. (mining)

 

[QuantumPhysics]

The problem isn't a "GPU shortage". The problem is scalping. If Intel wants to stand out, they should adopt the apple model:

#1 force buyers to preorder a card - limiting them to 1 or 2.
#2 Check ID to ensure the integrity of the orders.
#3 Distribute them directly.

The crypto market has crashed. I was in Microcenter yesterday and they had plenty of GPU available, albeit at high markups.
The shelf was stocked with 3080, 3070Ti, 3050, and a number of 2000 series cards - as well as a bunch of AMD cards nobody wants (specifically the Red Devils).

3050 was $439
3080 was $1499
3070ti was $949
6800 was $1219
6800XT = $1449

It's fair to say that as crypto becomes less profitable, GPU availability should become less of an issue. I am very happy to see Intel offering an option for the low-end GPU market.

I think they might as well start building their own laptops with an intel CPU and GPU.

 

[dad0ts]

...
I dont know why they keep repeating this. It's boy calling wolf, etherium will never go PoS.

Even if it goes PoS some day(which is highly unlikely) - there remain other crypto coins based on the same ethash PoW algo, there are other PoW algos, etc So better forget about it in the context of GPU pricing/availablilty. I also don't see how intel ARC desktop GPU (postponed to unknown date in 2022 and produced on the same TSMC fabs) could fundamentally change the market in the near future. Looks like in 2022 GPU prices are not lowering substantially: some minor up and down price fluctuations are not trends yet. It takes too much time and money to provide higher supply, and corporations are not willing to spend tens of bns of $ to find out that in 2024-2025 the demand is too low.

 

[dad0ts]

The crypto market has crashed.

Are you sure? You could say that when BTC/USD is 3-5K for some extended period of time, not 20-40K (since 2021).

 

[hahahanoobs]

"...adding that Intel is working hard to get “millions of Arc GPUs into the hands of PC gamers every year.”

Doesn't sound like a promise to me. Let's let the cards launch first.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I'll believe it when I see it. If neither nVidia or AMD could/would stop scalpers and miners from buying them en masse, how will Intel manage to do it? It's not like Intel has a good track record of giving a rat's posterior about consumers.

If we're hoping that Intel will save us, then we have no hope.

 

[Squid Surprise]

The problem isn't a "GPU shortage". The problem is scalping. If Intel wants to stand out, they should adopt the apple model:

#1 force buyers to preorder a card - limiting them to 1 or 2.
#2 Check ID to ensure the integrity of the orders.
#3 Distribute them directly.

The crypto market has crashed. I was in Microcenter yesterday and they had plenty of GPU available, albeit at high markups.
The shelf was stocked with 3080, 3070Ti, 3050, and a number of 2000 series cards - as well as a bunch of AMD cards nobody wants (specifically the Red Devils).

3050 was $439
3080 was $1499
3070ti was $949
6800 was $1219
6800XT = $1449

It's fair to say that as crypto becomes less profitable, GPU availability should become less of an issue. I am very happy to see Intel offering an option for the low-end GPU market.

I think they might as well start building their own laptops with an intel CPU and GPU.

No... the problem is SUPPLY... not scalping... scalping is simply human nature whenever there is a shortage of ANYTHING.

It's called supply and demand...

And as for the crypto market "crashing"... I'll believe that when it actually crashes...Bitcoin is still worth $48,000... that's no crash...

 

[Crabjuice]

Even if it goes PoS some day(which is highly unlikely) - there remain other crypto coins based on the same ethash PoW algo, there are other PoW algos, etc So better forget about it in the context of GPU pricing/availablilty. I also don't see how intel ARC desktop GPU (postponed to unknown date in 2022 and produced on the same TSMC fabs) could fundamentally change the market in the near future. Looks like in 2022 GPU prices are not lowering substantially: some minor up and down price fluctuations are not trends yet. It takes too much time and money to provide higher supply, and corporations are not willing to spend tens of bns of $ to find out that in 2024-2025 the demand is too low.

Even if it goes PoS some day(which is highly unlikely)

Huh? Where do you get this idea? PoS is literally in progress. It may not happen when promised but it’s happening.

 

[passwordistaco]

You think Intel, with their vast and diversified portfolio really cares about crypto mining?

Yes.

https://www.techspot.com/news/93030-intel-unveil-bitcoin-mining-asic-upcoming-chip-conference.html

 

[mbk34]

No... the problem is SUPPLY... not scalping... scalping is simply human nature whenever there is a shortage of ANYTHING.

It's called supply and demand...

If you're producing something then you can raise the price to slow demand - that's supply and demand. If you're just jumping to the front of the queue, buying everything, and then selling at a vastly inflated price to others in the queue that's called scalping.

 

[Squid Surprise]

If you're producing something then you can raise the price to slow demand - that's supply and demand. If you're just jumping to the front of the queue, buying everything, and then selling at a vastly inflated price to others in the queue that's called scalping.

Whether the manufacturer raises the price or 3rd party sellers do, is not the point.... the fact that prices are so high is simply because there aren't enough cards...

Once supply works itself out, prices will come down. Railing against scalpers is like railing against the weather... nothing will change it but an act of God...

 

[Bamda]

Intel does a LOT of talking, but I have yet to see one of their graphic cards on a shelf. They need to talk a LOT less and start delivering on their word.