Even as an Intel fanboi, I admit there's an argument to be made that Intel GPUs' brand reputation is essentially Windows Vista levels of dead in the water.
The ARC silicon is clearly impressive and very likely better than anything AMD has, but is dragged down by past and present software issues (which to be fair continue to improve) and the decades-long reputation of "only good for diagnostic and office work" Intel iGPUs. ARC needed to make a fucking splash of a first impression and Intel couldn't deliver, even their sole selling point of AV1 hardware encoding was quickly eliminated.
Intel should reboot the branding once ARC actually becomes presentable to the masses; maybe even drop the Intel name altogether because the baggage is just that heavy. The only people deliberately buying them right now are tinkerers and devout fanbois with more time and fervor than sense respectively.
I really don't feel this. Arc was rough to start with, but the constant news has been consistent and steady improvements in driver reliability and performance. I don't feel like the brand is tainted, people who are very invested will be following the news and knowing the state of things is improving, people who aren't will look up reviews when they go to buy and if the product is good, they won't care about the history.
Especially given the current GPU market which is very lacking in competition, I don't see Intel being unable to sell GPUs if they can deliver.
It isn't like the Radeon brand has a stellar history of software reliability either, but AMD have managed to mostly turn that around more recently.
If something goes on too long without progress it has to end.
They waited way too long to make the third set of Star Wars movie to the point where the only people who cared were toxic fans. If they had some sense they would have made a Doctor Who movie instead because the casting would have been appropriate.
Intel has burned me with numerous screw-ups such as two desktop replacement laptops I had where the "dual GPU" mode caused web browser malfunctions and the one way to make the system usable was to turn off the Intel "GPU". They found out everybody was doing this but instead of fixing the problem they just made it so you couldn't disable the iGPU. The same way Mozilla killed Pocket by trying to shove it up everybody's noses and Microsoft has killed numerous products (OneNote wasn't that bad but when you shove five icons for it on the desktop and on the toolbars you are not advertising it, you are anti-advertising it.) Intel GPUs have dragged my computers down for more than a decade and the one thing I want to hear is that they made a chip that doesn't waste a square micron of space on a GPU I don't want.
I think treating products like GPUs and content like movies as the same is misleading, people are much more willing to accept a new release of a product is different, content is inherently more linked and connected, because one leads into the next.
You may have a bad enough experience to never buy Intel, and certainly I've had bad Intel products, but I've also had bad AMD products and bad nVidia products. They have all released stinkers and people will buy if a new product is good by itself.
Past experience matters, but I don't think they are anywhere near a dead brand with Arc. If anything, the fact they didn't just drop the brand and try again, abandoning all the customers who went with it, and have consistently improved the product gives me more faith in anything they release, because it's a signal they won't just drop it on the floor when there is an issue.
If anything, I feel like Intel's bigger problem is CPUs where AMD's support of AM4 has been so good for people who bought into that ecosystem, it really hurts the value proposition of their new chips when they don't promise that kind of platform, but even there, there are a lot of people who will just judge each product as it is at released.
Current Arc GPUs silicon is extremely unimpressive. They're ~400mm^2 dies with 256 bit busses, but they're only performance competitive with GPUs that are around half their size (3060/6600xt, and the 6600xt only has a 128bit bus). Similar sized GPUs from AMD or Nvidia are around 50% faster.
> Similar sized GPUs from AMD or Nvidia are around 50% faster.
Name just one that's not 50% more expensive than an Arc A770, though.
I don't own an Intel GPU and have no intention of buying one, but if you're ignoring everything besides raw-performance then you're missing the point. This was an excellent first-showing for Intel, and their 16gb budget card hit the market right when everyone was pissing and moaning about low VRAM. It's a miracle they're not worse really.
Around the time that frequency scaling quit working in the early 2000's Intel got focused on a greedy strategy of trying to eat the rest of the balance of parts in cheap laptops which meant a general lowering of standards all around. (What I can't imagine is how Synaptics keeps hanging on, they must have some really good patent portfolio you can access only if you refuse to make a laptop or hybrid device without a junk touchpad.)
The nature of the PC world is that the buck never quite stops, if something doesn't work it might be Microsoft's fault or maybe Dell or maybe Intel or maybe some other vendor. This is how Intel's been able to get away with it but only in the short term as they have been leaking market share to Macs and mobile devices for a long long time.
>(Who wants to play games like Crysis or The Witcher when you can play Candy Crush or Azur Lane instead?)
Me. Well, not Candy Crush, that shit's asinine.
But I've spent far more of my gaming time on the likes of Fate/Grand Order and Princess Connect! Re:Dive over the last decade or so.
My interests just aren't piqued by most AAA PC/console games anymore. They are all vapid in content, wrote like shit in development, and marketed by the best snake oil peddlers in the land. Kind of like Hollywood movies.
They are already burning through names. No more pentium or celeron its called “intel processor” or something that tries and avoid any kind of taste in the mouth. They stopped calling it intel hd for no other reason than everyone who needs graphical utility installing a gpu first thing they do as soon as they see intel hd. Now they are calling it Xe. Lets see how long these names last before they burn more goodwill and have to find new ones again in a couple years.
I remember when Pentium used to be the Intel Core i9-- sorry, Core Ultra 9 of yestercentury.
You know, part of me wouldn't have minded the Core rebranding as much if they used Pentium for their high-end line instead of Ultra (eg: Core Pentium 7); nostalgia is a powerful beast.
Even the core doesn’t make any sense. There’s no telling what makes a k chip a k chip or an x chip and x chip, or u or h chips or whatever. They are all “high class” in intels terminology, so you practically have to just dive into the spec sheets yourself. Have fun juggling 20 of those when shopping for a cpu
It’s not burning through names. It’s a modern marketing tactic. You do not give separate named identity to your products, so they get associated with your main brand instead.
Carmakers are very guilty of this, with cars with numbers or letters. Apple too, with its Apple TV and Apple Watch.
I don't share this sentiment. I always appreciated how stable and "just works" they were, even on Linux. Since (IIRC) Sandy Bridge they were usable even for light gaming, I remember playing Mafia II on Sandy Bridge laptop just fine.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 67.5 ms ] threadWhat are you even talkin about? Intel's latest iGPUs are at the same level or even better at times, than AMD's latest Radeon APU iGPUs.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Yoga-Slim-7-14-G9-lapto...
The ARC silicon is clearly impressive and very likely better than anything AMD has, but is dragged down by past and present software issues (which to be fair continue to improve) and the decades-long reputation of "only good for diagnostic and office work" Intel iGPUs. ARC needed to make a fucking splash of a first impression and Intel couldn't deliver, even their sole selling point of AV1 hardware encoding was quickly eliminated.
Intel should reboot the branding once ARC actually becomes presentable to the masses; maybe even drop the Intel name altogether because the baggage is just that heavy. The only people deliberately buying them right now are tinkerers and devout fanbois with more time and fervor than sense respectively.
Especially given the current GPU market which is very lacking in competition, I don't see Intel being unable to sell GPUs if they can deliver.
It isn't like the Radeon brand has a stellar history of software reliability either, but AMD have managed to mostly turn that around more recently.
They waited way too long to make the third set of Star Wars movie to the point where the only people who cared were toxic fans. If they had some sense they would have made a Doctor Who movie instead because the casting would have been appropriate.
Intel has burned me with numerous screw-ups such as two desktop replacement laptops I had where the "dual GPU" mode caused web browser malfunctions and the one way to make the system usable was to turn off the Intel "GPU". They found out everybody was doing this but instead of fixing the problem they just made it so you couldn't disable the iGPU. The same way Mozilla killed Pocket by trying to shove it up everybody's noses and Microsoft has killed numerous products (OneNote wasn't that bad but when you shove five icons for it on the desktop and on the toolbars you are not advertising it, you are anti-advertising it.) Intel GPUs have dragged my computers down for more than a decade and the one thing I want to hear is that they made a chip that doesn't waste a square micron of space on a GPU I don't want.
You may have a bad enough experience to never buy Intel, and certainly I've had bad Intel products, but I've also had bad AMD products and bad nVidia products. They have all released stinkers and people will buy if a new product is good by itself.
Past experience matters, but I don't think they are anywhere near a dead brand with Arc. If anything, the fact they didn't just drop the brand and try again, abandoning all the customers who went with it, and have consistently improved the product gives me more faith in anything they release, because it's a signal they won't just drop it on the floor when there is an issue.
If anything, I feel like Intel's bigger problem is CPUs where AMD's support of AM4 has been so good for people who bought into that ecosystem, it really hurts the value proposition of their new chips when they don't promise that kind of platform, but even there, there are a lot of people who will just judge each product as it is at released.
This is one horrible irrelevant comparison after another, but this statement isn’t even true to start.
Compared to Nvidia and ATI, sorry I mean AMD Radeon Technologies Group, who've been at it for 30 years? Yeah, no shit they're unimpressive.
But how many other new GPU companies do you see entering the ring to challenge those two in an impressive way? <crickets chirping>
Name just one that's not 50% more expensive than an Arc A770, though.
I don't own an Intel GPU and have no intention of buying one, but if you're ignoring everything besides raw-performance then you're missing the point. This was an excellent first-showing for Intel, and their 16gb budget card hit the market right when everyone was pissing and moaning about low VRAM. It's a miracle they're not worse really.
The nature of the PC world is that the buck never quite stops, if something doesn't work it might be Microsoft's fault or maybe Dell or maybe Intel or maybe some other vendor. This is how Intel's been able to get away with it but only in the short term as they have been leaking market share to Macs and mobile devices for a long long time.
Intel's fate has been tied to Microsoft for a large fraction of these companies' existence.
And now Microsoft is reportedly saving Intel by giving them a 15billion could contract.
Me. Well, not Candy Crush, that shit's asinine.
But I've spent far more of my gaming time on the likes of Fate/Grand Order and Princess Connect! Re:Dive over the last decade or so.
My interests just aren't piqued by most AAA PC/console games anymore. They are all vapid in content, wrote like shit in development, and marketed by the best snake oil peddlers in the land. Kind of like Hollywood movies.
I'm there for the story, and by extension the whole experience they have to offer. Danbooru can certainly give me JPGs, but that's all.
You know, part of me wouldn't have minded the Core rebranding as much if they used Pentium for their high-end line instead of Ultra (eg: Core Pentium 7); nostalgia is a powerful beast.
Carmakers are very guilty of this, with cars with numbers or letters. Apple too, with its Apple TV and Apple Watch.
Entirely different market segment, I'm not even sure how's that particularly relevant when talking about iGPUs anyway/