Random thoughts on Arc and 3050

[porina]

Just poking around the internets and saw claimed memory configurations of the impending Arc GPUs. 

https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-arc-alchemist-mobile-to-feature-five-skus-and-four-memory-configurations-up-to-16gb-g6-at-16gbps

 

Then thought it an idea to try and compare to existing and upcoming GPUs from red and green.

 

Arc model names are still unknown so we can go by the EU count. I'm assuming the top part is equal to a 3070. Some rumours have been comparing it to 3070 Ti, but I'm going to be a bit more cautious than that.

 

512EU 16GB - I'm assuming this will go against the 3070, or between 6800 and 6800 XT overall, maybe closer to the latter.

384EU 12GB - scaling from the 512EU model, this would put it just above 3060 or 6700 XT

256EC 8GB - again scaling from 512EU, this would put it slightly above the 3050 or about same as 6600 XT

128EU 4GB - slightly below the widely loved 6500 XT

96EU 4GB - would presumably beat the OEM only 6400

 

There seems to be a 3070 Ti 16GB in preparation, and presumably that'll be nvidia's play to ensure they remain above the 512EU Arc. 6800 models already have 16GB so seems unlikely to see anything else new there.

 

Also there may be some hope for more sensible pricing of the 3050, as it is reportedly bad at Ethereum mining.

https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3050-is-not-good-for-ethereum-mining

As a LHR card, people with early access have reported around 13MH/s sustained from it, dropping from 20 MH/z before LHR kicks in. The nearest AMD card 6600 does around 27MH/s stock to 30MH/s optimised. As such the 6600 has been significantly elevated in pricing. So mining might not be a reason for 3050 to be elevated in pricing, although others might still apply.

[Xwartu]

I thought part of it being a new GPU architecture that Execution Units can't really be compared to Compute Units, no? (assuming that's where the EU count is coming into play) Still, I'd likely agree with your assessment of the ranking, but I'd imagine part of Intel's performance will change when software is made and mended with their GPUs in mind. 

[porina]

7 minutes ago, Xwartu said:

I thought part of it being a new GPU architecture that Execution Units can't really be compared to Compute Units, no? (assuming that's where the EU count is coming into play) Still, I'd likely agree with your assessment of the ranking, but I'd imagine part of Intel's performance will change when software is made and mended with their GPUs in mind. 

We know what an EU is as they're already in use in products you can buy today, although I'm not up to speed on any generational differences that may or may not be there. The scaling wont be exact compared to nvidia or AMD, but we've had several leaks putting the top model against at least a 3070 so I'm using that as my main comparison point. Not that I think it needs to be said, but there will be a large margin of error potential until we get some hard numbers to work off.

[Xwartu]

2 minutes ago, porina said:

We know what an EU is as they're already in use in products you can buy today, although I'm not up to speed on any generational differences that may or may not be there. The scaling wont be exact compared to nvidia or AMD, but we've had several leaks putting the top model against at least a 3070 so I'm using that as my main comparison point. Not that I think it needs to be said, but there will be a large margin of error potential until we get some hard numbers to work off.

Ah, well anyways I think it's sound besides that caveat, which you were right didn't have to be fully clarified. Props to intel regardless for using a currently unstressed node. Hope that pays off in production for them.