News Intel Arc Board Partner Ceasing Production, Report

[Admin]

Igor Wallossek says at least one AIB partner has stopped Arc graphics card production due to quality concerns. The report also highlights partner complaints about the OEM business, inventories, and price guarantees.

Intel Arc Board Partner Ceasing Production, Report : Read more

 

[InvalidError]

If AIBs decide to suspend or cancel manufacturing of ARC GPUs using their current silicon stock, it may very well be because they concluded that an in-silicon fix will be required to resolve problems they have been running into.

 

[-Fran-]

Out of all the AIBs that could tell Intel to go pound sand is Asus, for sure. It's the biggest and the one that has the biggest array of different products they could put the Arc GPUs into and we haven't seen teasers even from neither the Zen or ROG lines, where I'm sure Intel would love to be showcased in full.

Anyway, not a good outlook, but what Intel does from now onwards will count for AIBs and SIs, since this is a lot of money they'd have to write off as a loss otherwise.

As a general statement, just thinking from the timing and scope of things, I'll put the blame on this whole kerfuffle on management. I'm 1200% sure no sane engineer (even a new hire) for the Graphics division would be insane enough to look at the amount of features* promised and say "yeah, we can hit the deadlines no problem". Plus, as stated everywhere, it's not like it was a big secret Intel iGPU drivers have always sucked donkey marbles, even with the basic features and they wanted to do 10x more with new hardware? I know hindsight 20/20 is great, but I was the first to say the drivers would be the last bastion for Intel with the GPUs.

All in all, I hope Intel puts their humble pants/trousers and just helps alleviate the situation so they do become another participant in the discrete GPU market. We all benefit from that, even if Intel is known for their shenanigans.

Regards.

 

[artk2219]

Out of all the AIBs that could tell Intel to go pound sand is Asus, for sure. It's the biggest and the one that has the biggest array of different products they could put the Arc GPUs into and we haven't seen teasers even from neither the Zen or ROG lines, where I'm sure Intel would love to be showcased in full.

Anyway, not a good outlook, but what Intel does from now onwards will count for AIBs and SIs, since this is a lot of money they'd have to write off as a loss otherwise.

As a general statement, just thinking from the timing and scope of things, I'll put the blame on this whole kerfuffle on management. I'm 1200% sure no sane engineer (even a new hire) for the Graphics division would be insane enough to look at the amount of featured promised and say "yeah, we can hit the deadlines no problem". Plus, as stated everywhere, it's not like it was a big secret Intel iGPU drivers have always sucked donkey marbles, even with the basic features and they wanted to do 10x more with new hardware? I know hindsight 20/20 i great, but I was the first to say the drivers would be the last bastion for Intel with the GPUs.

All in all, I hope Intel puts their humble pants/trousers and just helps alleviate the situation so they do become another participant in the discrete GPU market. We all benefit from that, even if Intel is known for their shenanigans.

Regards.

You are right, they've had a serious case of feature creep and lets say optimistic deadlines. They need to pair it down, say we've got a basic relatively stable graphics driver, and maybe we can also record or one other thing. But to have it do like 20 things Intels never done or never done on that level in the first place all at once? Pure friggin insanity, and clearly a case of management plugging their ears when the engineers are speaking and saying "get it done", Ive never understood that mindset in engineering companies, you'd figure they would know better. Honestly if they don't call it quits, they've got 3 to 5 years of work to get to decent parity with AMD and Nvidia. It would be a bit disheartening if they did quit this soon, I don't love Intel, i think they can be a pretty crappy company for the market (I would say sometimes but its actually pretty often), but a third player in the graphics market, especially one with production capacity, would shake things up considerably.

 

[InvalidError]

I know hindsight 20/20 is great, but I was the first to say the drivers would be the last bastion for Intel with the GPUs.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I was quite early saying Intel would need several years getting their dGPU drivers in order when Intel announced plans to return to dGPUs.

After 20+ years of sub-par IGP drivers beyond essential functionality to run Office and similar workloads, there was absolutely no basis to have any faith Intel would pull a miracle out of its ass for its dGPUs.

 

[Wisecracker]

As nastee as this is likely to turn out down the road, I hope Intel sticks with it.

Need more marketing slide-decks. STAT !! (j/k) It has been 25 years of Chipzillah Fail __ from the i740 AGP to Hades Canyon, but generally good things have come out of it__ for the tens of billions of dollars spent it in the end.

I mean, look at Larrabee . . . ( eye roll ) . . .

 

[bigdragon]

I expect that Intel is dictating terms and expectations to their partners. They've always done this -- most publicly with netbooks and Ultrabooks. Intel used to dictate screen sizes, materials, and what system components could be paired with their own parts. They'd charge OEMs different prices based on whether they complied with Intel's specs or did something different. Intel's behavior stifled competition and prevented the market from experimenting with new form factors and designs. Given the wild variety we see in Nvidia and AMD GPUs, Intel dictating terms is likely not being received well.

I do hope that Intel loosens up and continues to invest in dedicated graphics. Nvidia and AMD need a strong competitor. Intel isn't there yet, but they will get there if they don't pull the plug.

 

[Eximo]

I believe that is generally how GPU pricing goes. The designer sets the rough MSRP and you have to agree to that to get silicon.

All these AIBs signed up to build Intel cards and sell them for a profit during the crypto boom. With the delays and Intel's announcements about pricing their cards by their lowest performance levels, their top model is going to be $400, not $1000. Not much in it for the AIBs and Intel probably doesn't want a lot of cards on the market if they can try and rapidly swap out the old silicon with corrected versions.

 

[cryoburner]

It could also simply be that some manufacturer doesn't want to agree to sell the cards at the competitive pricing (and low margins) Intel may be trying to dictate, and is using "quality concerns" as an excuse to save face for why they are backing out. For example, if they are currently sitting on a large quantity of 3060s that they are still trying to move for $400+ at retail, but Intel wants them to sell an A750 (with potentially similar or better performance) for something closer to $300. Intel likely wants to price their first-generation cards as low as possible to make a good first impression, but manufacturing partners are still trying to push crypto-inflated pricing on mid-range to lower-end cards as much as they can. New mid-range cards from Nvidia and AMD may not be coming until early next year, but Intel's cards will likely be undercutting the prices of existing models a lot sooner. There's also the possibility that someone like Nvidia may have struck a deal with the manufacturer to encourage them to drop support.

Of course, there likely will be some issues related to Intel's drivers for a while, and that could make some partners hesitant to market Intel's cards under their usual gaming brands. But that's not necessarily the main reason a manufacturer would back out of selling them.

 

[InvalidError]

It could also simply be that some manufacturer doesn't want to agree to sell the cards at the competitive pricing (and low margins) Intel may be trying to dictate, and is using "quality concerns" as an excuse to save face for why they are backing out.

The only way Intel could force AIBs to sell GPUs below a specific price would be for the price limit to have been spelled out in the chip contracts that have already been agreed to. It wouldn't make sense for AIB partners to halt manufacturing due to a retail price dispute here since they'd be in breach of contract and likely end up having to pay compensation to Intel on top of writing off the chips they won't be turning into marketable products. Also, for the A380 to hit the retail prices that have been hinted at based on Chinese pricing, Intel must be offering extremely favorable pricing to the few AIBs it signed up.

I heavily doubt AIBs are suspending A380 card manufacturing on a whim or greedy streak. All of the reviews make it clear that the A380 has very limited viability beyond $150 in its current form.

The three scenarios that make the most sense to me are:
1- a silicon re-spin is coming and AIBs want to minimize the number of boards they will need to rework
2- Intel has postponed the A380 launch while it attempts to figure out the issues it has failed to sort out before the launch window yet again
3- AIBs have decided to limit potential brand damage from Intel's still inadequate drivers, dysfunctional software and possibly unresolved hardware issues

I have no trouble believing GN's claims of bone-headed software issues. The most bone-headed problem I've had with Intel's Control Center for much of 2021 is Control Center only listing the primary GPU (GPU0 - GTX1050), which meant I couldn't configure the IGP (GPU1 - UHD730) since I couldn't select it. During that time, I was delegating browser hardware acceleration to IGP in order to conserve GPU VRAM. At some point after Intel fixed that issue, either Nvidia or Intel screwed something up and I'm periodically getting Nvidia driver restarts when the IGP is enabled, so I had to give up browser delegation to IGP.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Out of all the AIBs that could tell Intel to go pound sand is Asus, for sure. It's the biggest and the one that has the biggest array of different products they could put the Arc GPUs into and we haven't seen teasers even from neither the Zen or ROG lines, where I'm sure Intel would love to be showcased in full.

Anyway, not a good outlook, but what Intel does from now onwards will count for AIBs and SIs, since this is a lot of money they'd have to write off as a loss otherwise.

As a general statement, just thinking from the timing and scope of things, I'll put the blame on this whole kerfuffle on management. I'm 1200% sure no sane engineer (even a new hire) for the Graphics division would be insane enough to look at the amount of features* promised and say "yeah, we can hit the deadlines no problem". Plus, as stated everywhere, it's not like it was a big secret Intel iGPU drivers have always sucked donkey marbles, even with the basic features and they wanted to do 10x more with new hardware? I know hindsight 20/20 is great, but I was the first to say the drivers would be the last bastion for Intel with the GPUs.

All in all, I hope Intel puts their humble pants/trousers and just helps alleviate the situation so they do become another participant in the discrete GPU market. We all benefit from that, even if Intel is known for their shenanigans.

Regards.

Their iGPU drivers were bad?

I never once experienced an Intel iGPU issue. But it's sort of like buying a Prius. It's dependable but not very sporty or exciting. (To the Prius owners I offend, me being a former one, I apologize in advance.)

Their Arc GPU drivers however are major cringe. I'm even afraid to try for gits and shiggles after all the reviews I saw.

If I were to take a bet, I would say it's a small player who can't take the loss of non selling GPUs.

If there is a critical flaw in silicon, it becomes Intel's responsibility to reimburse the AIBs for the defective product.

 

[-Fran-]

Their iGPU drivers were bad?

I never once experienced an Intel iGPU issue. But it's sort of like buying a Prius. It's dependable but not very sporty or exciting. (To the Prius owners I offend, me being a former one, I apologize in advance.)

Their Arc GPU drivers however are major cringe. I'm even afraid to try for gits and shiggles after all the reviews I saw.

If I were to take a bet, I would say it's a small player who can't take the loss of non selling GPUs.

If there is a critical flaw in silicon, it becomes Intel's responsibility to reimburse the AIBs for the defective product.

They "weren't" bad, they ARE bad. This is not just my view of how bad they are when you try to do more than use a single screen. Their display ports have always had issues with all monitors I've tried attaching and I've had to swap to HDMI and use 60Hz or the monitors would turn off suddenly, the PC would BSOD or it would change the refresh to 30Hz at times. Not even counting their love for 59.xHz refresh rate. Some monitors you can't even set them at their native refresh rates for some reason. Then you have colour calibration, which is another abomination in terms of usage of their drivers. Hell, my current laptop I use for work cannot get more than 2 monitors going, even with the docking station because it BSODs! I've asked our support people about it and they can't do anything because I have the latest drivers and all that. And this is not me with the issue either. We use Dell Precisions, which are not even your cheap line. This is the first laptop I've had so many issues with (from work), because it's an "only Intel" laptop (no dGPU). Previous versions I've had either a Quadro or Fire card as a proper GPU with zero issues (when used). Whenever people had issues, I checked whether they were using the dGPUs (if their laptop had it) or not. For some reason, the Company didn't install the dGPU drivers by default and I had to convince them to do so whenever someone had issues.

I could keep going on about how many things I've tried to "use" and just don't work or kind of work if you're willing to accept a weird experience. If you are the type that just "uses it" without changing anything, well, good for you, I guess? For the big majority that actually needs to use the video card for things just a little out of the basic experience, well, Intel drivers are just horrible.

Regards.

 

[Eximo]

My most recent laptop has Iris Xe graphics in it. All I can say is, thank the tech gods that it also has an MX350.

General web-browsing as delivered, certain page animations, advertisements, videos, anything that used the GPU. Black screen. Scroll the browser past that point, picture returns. I tried the latest drivers, didn't help. Eventually had to set the browser as a high performance app and make it use the Nvidia GPU, zero problems since.

Does use a lot more battery this way, since the displays are still driven by Intel with the processing done by Nvidia. But worth it.

 

[digitalgriffin]

They "weren't" bad, they ARE bad. This is not just my view of how bad they are when you try to do more than use a single screen. Their display ports have always had issues with all monitors I've tried attaching and I've had to swap to HDMI and use 60Hz or the monitors would turn off suddenly, the PC would BSOD or it would change the refresh to 30Hz at times. Not even counting their love for 59.xHz refresh rate. Some monitors you can't even set them at their native refresh rates for some reason. Then you have colour calibration, which is another abomination in terms of usage of their drivers. Hell, my current laptop I use for work cannot get more than 2 monitors going, even with the docking station because it BSODs! I've asked our support people about it and they can't do anything because I have the latest drivers and all that. And this is not me with the issue either. We use Dell Precisions, which are not even your cheap line. This is the first laptop I've had so many issues with (from work), because it's an "only Intel" laptop (no dGPU). Previous versions I've had either a Quadro or Fire card as a proper GPU with zero issues (when used). Whenever people had issues, I checked whether they were using the dGPUs (if their laptop had it) or not. For some reason, the Company didn't install the dGPU drivers by default and I had to convince them to do so whenever someone had issues.

I could keep going on about how many things I've tried to "use" and just don't work or kind of work if you're willing to accept a weird experience. If you are the type that just "uses it" without changing anything, well, good for you, I guess? For the big majority that actually needs to use the video card for things just a little out of the basic experience, well, Intel drivers are just horrible.

Regards.

Fascinating. I haven't had a iGPU Intel issue since Sandy Bridge. It's not that I don't believe you. I just never experienced it. But I never pushed it for anything critical. Just standard desktop stuff.


I'm currently driving 3 monitors (2 DP + 1 laptop) and have no isssues using the Intel iGPU. I do find docking stations can have a very broad range of compatibility issues. The first gen Dell Thunderbolt USB docks were disasters for stability.

 

[InvalidError]

If there is a critical flaw in silicon, it becomes Intel's responsibility to reimburse the AIBs for the defective product.

If it was an absolutely critical flaw, I doubt Gunnir and ASRock would be making A380s.

My re-spin hypothesis is basically that the sum of all work-arounds for v1 retail siicon ends up amounting to something Intel would prefer to remain contained in China. Perhaps the improvements in variability and streamlining between v1 and v2 would end up being large enough to warrant renaming v2 to A385.

I'd expect the flaws to be along the line of quirks that are giving firmware and driver developers headaches due to unforeseen complications they need to work around of, costing them disproportionate development time, some performance and visual quality. Depending on the nature of those quirks, there may also be issues with variability in how performance/quality/resources/etc. costly each work-around is.

With Intel announcing that its Alchemist lineup will be priced based on third-tier game performance, that should take care of most potential class action lawsuits for under-delivering at a given price as long as Intel's worst cases are reasonably realistic. Intel must be working hard on fixing issues that are causing the A380 to fall well behind the GTX1630 in some games. Until it does that, pricing the A380 proportionally to third-tier game performance would mean ~$100.

 

[digitalgriffin]

If it was an absolutely critical flaw, I doubt Gunnir and ASRock would be making A380s.

My re-spin hypothesis is basically that the sum of all work-arounds for v1 retail siicon ends up amounting to something Intel would prefer to remain contained in China. Perhaps the improvements in variability and streamlining between v1 and v2 would end up being large enough to warrant renaming v2 to A385.

I'd expect the flaws to be along the line of quirks that are giving firmware and driver developers headaches due to unforeseen complications they need to work around of, costing them disproportionate development time, some performance and visual quality. Depending on the nature of those quirks, there may also be issues with variability in how performance/quality/resources/etc. costly each work-around is.

With Intel announcing that its Alchemist lineup will be priced based on third-tier game performance, that should take care of most potential class action lawsuits for under-delivering at a given price as long as Intel's worst cases are reasonably realistic. Intel must be working hard on fixing issues that are causing the A380 to fall well behind the GTX1630 in some games. Until it does that, pricing the A380 proportionally to third-tier game performance would mean ~$100.

Interesting.

I wouldn't be surprised to be honest. How many respins did Polaris have under Raja?

 

[bigdragon]

They "weren't" bad, they ARE bad. This is not just my view of how bad they are when you try to do more than use a single screen. Their display ports have always had issues with all monitors I've tried attaching and I've had to swap to HDMI and use 60Hz or the monitors would turn off suddenly, the PC would BSOD or it would change the refresh to 30Hz at times.

YES! I wanted to quote this so I could:

1) Complain about how hard it is to disable adaptive brightness / dynamic brightness / display power saving on Intel laptops and tablets. You can uncheck all the boxes in all the settings apps, but it would still change the screen brightness depending on the content shown. I'm not sure the IGP control panel toggle actually does anything -- had to edit registry entries to fully stop this behavior.

2) Confirm that yes, Intel doesn't handle multiple monitors well via DisplayPort. Some of my work devices use their Intel IGPs and frequently have monitors go into "coma mode" following screen lock-related sleeping. This is usually accompanied by some weirdly detected refresh rates or screen resolutions.

Intel really needs to get serious about their graphics driver. I think executives and management do not appreciate how much time, skill, and testing goes into producing the drivers Nvidia and AMD use. Sure, they're not perfect, but they do have working settings and can handle a variety of displays and applications.

 

[InvalidError]

Interesting.

I wouldn't be surprised to be honest. How many respins did Polaris have under Raja?

Who knows? Those back-store details don't get published very often besides the spins that hit market and have entries in errata sheets listing the key points. For Polaris, we know there was at least one major revision that improved performance per watt by ~50%.

If you read about Intel's Puma cable modem chipset debacle, you can imagine how Intel may not be eager to make its worldwide dGPU debut with a product lineup it may not be able to fully fix with drivers and firmware again.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Who knows? Those back-store details don't get published very often besides the spins that hit market and have entries in errata sheets listing the key points. For Polaris, we know there was at least one major revision that improved performance per watt by ~50%.

If you read about Intel's Puma cable modem chipset debacle, you can imagine how Intel may not be eager to make its worldwide dGPU debut with a product lineup it may not be able to fully fix with drivers and firmware again.

Yep. The Puma was a disaster.

 

[Foxlum]

This really shouldn't be so hard for a very large company to do well, unless there's severe communication issues within which is most likely. Intel has had buggy iGPU drivers for years, only occasionally getting to the point of usable.

There is a reason alot of games don't support Intel, they just don't do good. And they're clearly not learning from that at all. Just essentially making a desktop Xe situation at higher wattages and less stock performance than the competition's, they have no (true) reason to be this bad.

(Obviously said communication issues, but from what we've seen it's like they got a few interns to work on the drivers, that's the only explanation of how it's absolutely terrible.)

I wouldn't buy this even on the market, the support for these dGPUs are going to be significantly worse than AMD or Nvidia. You can't really depend on Intel to give a good graphics experience, only a mediocre to bad one.

And no one should be saying they just need another generation, they gave a bad second gpu generation already, it's this.

 

[InvalidError]

There is a reason alot of games don't support Intel

Games don't need to support any vendor-specific hardware. All they need to do properly implement a specific API, the rest is the GPU designers' problem. That is how most 20+ years old games are still able to work on modern hardware despite modern hardware being completely different from anything that was available back when the games got their last update.

If we're talking game optimization, then that would be whatever the game got developed on, which is often a function of whether the game was sponsored by AMD or Nvidia.

If Intel is serious about dGPUs, we'll likely see some Intel-sponsored titles for Celestial or Druig to showcase whatever new features Intel wants to be first to market with.

 

[renz496]

Software side there bound to be issues. Intel need to get the hardware out to the public and start getting feedback. It will take years to sort out. But on the issue AIB backing out i think it is mostly about pricing. They want to push the price up especially the "sweet spot" $250 towards $400 market. Steve from GN said that AIB has been asking nvidia to do something like that for a long time already citing the increasing cost making the sub $300 a market they can't make money or they will have to close shop if the mainstream market does not move into higher price range. So intel want to push competitive price will foil the plan to push the price up. Because once intel did it nvidia and AMD definitely respond. Then suddenly the mainstream market still revolve around sub $300.

 

[martinch]

They "weren't" bad, they ARE bad. This is not just my view of how bad they are when you try to do more than use a single screen. Their display ports have always had issues with all monitors I've tried attaching

That's surprising. Maybe I've just been really lucky, but I can't say I've had any issues with my old Dell E7440 (i7-4600U) or my current Precision 7760 (i7-11850H) - both "just work" when connected to a pair of Dell U2515H screens over DisplayPort via a dock (and also work fine with the internal screen for a total of 3 active at the same time). The screens were colour-calibrated with an i1 Display, too. The only Intel GPU drivers I've had an issue with have been the Linux ones with an i3-4330 (HD Graphics 4600) back around 2015, when scrolling a web page would result in little black blocks in the page until you scrolled some more. :/

Definitely sounds like you've not been having fun, though!