Early benchmarks make Intel's Arc mobile GPU look like a gimped GTX 1650 Max-Q

[Alfatawi Mendel]

In my opinion, I feel Intel's ARC dedicated GPUs are too late in the game, especially when we are looking at the top end model that is expected to compete with the likes of RTX 3070 and RX 6700 XT. The former was announced and released last year and a new generation expected in 2022. 2022 is where ARC is supposed to be released if I am not mistaken. So whatever attractiveness of the ARC GPU will be negated as we close in towards the later part of 2022. The only saving grace for Intel is that the GPU shortage may drive a higher adoption rate of their ARC GPU. But this is a double edged sword for them because if Intel mess up the initial experience, when things eventually recovers, not many gamers will be interested in buying it. It is like how AMD messed up the RDNA launch with very bad driver issues, which made a lot of people skeptical when they released RDNA2. Till now, I have seen people asking if AMD GPU drivers are stable or not. So that impression sticks around.

I've been using an AMD rx5700 since 03/19 and it has been rock-solid. No black screens, nothing.
From my perspective the driver issue is non-existent. Just like my previous card Nvidia 9600 (which still works fine in another rig). Given that none of the tech press reviewers had any issues with the RDNA cards either. It would seem that the driver issue was overblown.

 

[mrSister]

"If it can manufacture them without disruptions using its own chip plants, many gamers and cryptocurrency miners will buy them in a heartbeat."

It these cards end up being any good at mining, you can bet for sure only miners will get their hand son them.

 

[AMN3S1AC]

This will just be another unavailable, scalped gpu to add to the list.

 

[Scrye74]

When it comes to hardware it does looks to be a strong offering don't get me wrong. But given how notoriously bad intel has been at driver support and well driver optimization is basically non-existent, it's really hard to be optimistic about this product from a gaming perspective.

I'm hoping they remain bad at driver support and thus have to keep the price low to sell these cards. If the card is cheap and fast then maybe it will be a better sacrificial lamb to offer up to the miners. The miners get fast cheap cards with no continual driver support (they don't care anyway) and we get to buy our slightly more expensive gaming cards, at or near MSRP.