News Intel's Xe-HPG DG2 Graphics Card Pictured: Big, Green and Power Hungry

[InvalidError]

Terrible drivers hasn't stopped people from buying ATi/AMD cards.

Except that a "bad GPU driver" from AMD/ATI is usually an average driver for Intel GPUs.

Intel's real prize here is Xe HPC, that's where all of the real design and driver effort will go. The gamer thing is just a warm-up to put some of the stuff in researchers' hands and amortize the costs.

 

[spongiemaster]

Except that a "bad GPU driver" from AMD/ATI is usually an average driver for Intel GPUs.

Intel's real prize here is Xe HPC, that's where all of the real design and driver effort will go. The gamer thing is just a warm-up to put some of the stuff in researchers' hands and amortize the costs.

AMD has had some pretty terrible drivers over the years. I was a victim of many of them. They're better on average now, but their history isn't preventing current sales. I'm not sure we can really know what Intel is going to produce. I wouldn't use their IGP as a baseline as I doubt they were really trying there. No one was buying their CPU's because they wanted to game on the IGP so there was no revenue incentive in it for them. I'm not expecting much from their driver team at launch, but given current market conditions the drivers just need to be good enough to make cards a viable option.

HPC is why Intel is doing all of this. No arguement there. If they are highly successful there, will they bail on gaming? Or if they fail to make inroads in HPC, will they abandon all GPU development? Intel is not afraid of bailing on market segments no matter how much money they dumped into R&D.

 

[TerryLaze]

AMD has had some pretty terrible drivers over the years. I was a victim of many of them. They're better on average now, but their history isn't preventing current sales. I'm not sure we can really know what Intel is going to produce. I wouldn't use their IGP as a baseline as I doubt they were really trying there. No one was buying their CPU's because they wanted to game on the IGP so there was no revenue incentive in it for them. I'm not expecting much from their driver team at launch, but given current market conditions the drivers just need to be good enough to make cards a viable option.

HPC is why Intel is doing all of this. No arguement there. If they are highly successful there, will they bail on gaming? Or if they fail to make inroads in HPC, will they abandon all GPU development? Intel is not afraid of bailing on market segments no matter how much money they dumped into R&D.

If OEMs, both laptop and desktop, could get away with an intel CPU and no extra GPU there would be an uptake in (pre) orders of their CPUs so there would be money in it for intel.
The thing is that the iGPUs are just not capable of decent gaming, so why bother with drivers.
But for the dg2 they better make drivers that are optimized for gaming, unless they want to sell them only to miners.

 

[InvalidError]

I wouldn't use their IGP as a baseline as I doubt they were really trying there.

Intel has had over a year of Xe IGPs and DG1 on top of 15 years of other IGPs to get their drivers in order and Xe drivers still mostly suck. That's what the baseline for DG2 drivers is and you don't become a driver hero overnight. For DG2 to have a decent launch, DG1, Tiger Lake and Rocket Lake IGP issues would need to be mostly solved by now. Intel couldn't even be bothered to have official IGP drivers ready until weeks after Rocket Lake's launch.

Intel is not prepared. The DG2 launch will either hurt or get delayed.

 

[spongiemaster]

Intel has had over a year of Xe IGPs and DG1 on top of 15 years of other IGPs to get their drivers in order and Xe drivers still mostly suck. That's what the baseline for DG2 drivers is and you don't become a driver hero overnight. For DG2 to have a decent launch, DG1, Tiger Lake and Rocket Lake IGP issues would need to be mostly solved by now. Intel couldn't even be bothered to have official IGP drivers ready until weeks after Rocket Lake's launch.

Intel is not prepared. The DG2 launch will either hurt or get delayed.

I haven't been keeping tabs on the quality of the Xe based IGP drivers. We have a few TL based laptops at work which aren't gamed on and have been reliable. If the drivers are as bad as you say then there is reason to be concerned.

Intel has their hand in too many cookie jars and isn't getting any cookies. Their ability to hit any of their roadmap targets has been abysmal in recent years. I don't think we're going to see another major release from Intel this year. The best chance we got is mobile Alder Lake. I don't think DG2 or desktop AL will release this year, unless it is an extremely limited release just to say they did and there are key features missing like day 1 ray tracing support or DDR5.

 

[jasonf2]

There really has never been a better environment for someone to launch a GPU. All it has to do is be stable, operate at any of the 3000 series benchmarks and be somewhat available and it will sell. The last time I looked for a GPU about the best thing I could get in stock was a 1050ti or 2000 series refurbs without getting scalped. If Intel doesn't completely blow the launch they will sell.

 

[danusn]

[Humor] I was worried the 'Big Guy' wouldn't be able to go green... fears abated for the moment.

Intel has been a recognized leader in 'being green' for quite some time.

https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-honors-2019-green-power-leaders