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As TFA rightly points out, unless something drastically changes in the next ~6mo, Intel is going to launch into the most favorable market situation we've seen i
by Exmoor 5y ago
As TFA rightly points out, unless something drastically changes in the next ~6mo, Intel is going to launch into the most favorable market situation we've seen in our lifetimes. Previously, the expectation is that they needed to introduce something that was competitive with the top end cards from nVidia and AMD. With basically all GPU's out of stock currently they really just need to introduce something competitive with the almost anything on the market to be able to sell as much as they can ship.
- voidfunc 5y agoIntel has the manufacturing capability to really beat up Nvidia. Even if the cards don’t perform like top-tier cards they could still win bigly here. Very exciting!
- flenserboy 5y agoIndeed. Something that's affordable and hits even RX 580 performance would grab the attention of many. Good enough really is when supply is low and prices are high.
- opencl 5y agoIntel is not even manufacturing these, they are TSMC 7nm so they are competing for the same fab capacity that everyone else is using.
- judge2020 5y ago*AMD/Apple is using. Nvidia's always-sold-out Ampere-based gaming chips are made in a Samsung fab. https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-ampere-samsung-8nm-process/ https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-ampere-samsung-8nm-process/
- paulmd 5y agoif NVIDIA cards were priced as ridiculously as AMD cards they'd be sitting on store shelves too
- kllrnohj 5y agoNvidia doesn't price any cards other than the founder's editions which you'll notice they both drastically cut down on availability for and also didn't do at all for the "price sensitive" mid-range tier. Nvidia's pricing as a result is completely fake. Like the claimed "$330 3060" in fact starts at $400 and rapidly goes up from there, with MSRP's on 3060's as high as $560.
- paulmd 5y agoI didn't say NVIDIA did directly price cards? Doesn't sound like you are doing a very good job of following the HN rule - always give the most gracious possible reading of a comment. Nothing I said directly implied that they did, you just wanted to pick a bone. It's really quite rude to put words in people's mouths, and that's why we have this rule. But a 6900XT is available for $3100 at my local store... and the 3090 is $2100. Between the two it's not hard to see why the NVIDIA cards are selling and the AMD cards are sitting on the shelves, the AMD cards are 50% more expensive for the same performance. As for why that is - which is the point I think you wanted to address, and decided to try and impute into my comment - who knows. Price are "sticky" (retailers don't want to mark down prices and take a loss) and AMD moves fewer cards in general. Maybe that means that prices are "stickier for longer" with AMD. Or maybe it's another thing like Vega where AMD set the MSRP so low that partners can't actually build and sell a card for a profit at competitive prices. But in general, regardless of why - the prices for AMD cards are generally higher, and when they go down the AMD cards sell out too. The inventory that is available is available because it's overpriced. (and for both brands, the pre-tariff MSRPs are essentially a fiction at this point apart from the reference cards and will probably never be met again.)
- RussianCow 5y ago> But a 6900XT is available for $3100 at my local store... and the 3090 is $2100. That's just your store being dumb, then. The 6900 XT is averaging about $1,500 brand new on eBay[0] while the 3090 is going for about $2,500[1]. Even on Newegg, the cheapest in-stock 6900 XT card is $1,700[2] while the cheapest 3090 is $3,000[3]. Everything I've read suggests that the AMD cards, while generally a little slower than their Nvidia counterparts (especially when you factor in ray-tracing), give you way more bang for your buck. > the prices for AMD cards are generally higher This is just not true. There may be several reasons for the Nvidia cards being out of stock more often than AMD: better performance; stronger brand; lower production counts; poor perception of AMD drivers; specific games being optimized for Nvidia; or pretty much anything else. But at this point, pricing is set by supply and demand, not by arbitrary MSRPs set by Nvidia/AMD, so claiming that AMD cards are priced too high is absolutely incorrect. [0]: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=6900xt&_sacat=0&LH_ItemCondition=1000&rt=nc&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=6900xt&_sacat... [1]: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=3090&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1&rt=nc&LH_ItemCondition=1000 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=3090&_sacat=0... [2]: https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007709%20601359957&Order=1 https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007709%20601359957&Order=1 [3]: https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007709%20601357248&Order=1 https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007709%20601357248&Order=1
- Yizahi 5y agoNvidia would also use TSMC 7nm since it is much better that Samsung 8mn. So potentially they are also waiting for the TSMC availability.
- judge2020 5y agoHow is it 'much better'? 7nm is not better than 8nm because it has a smaller number - the number doesn't correlate strongly with transistor density these days.
- kllrnohj 5y agoDid you bother trying to do any research or comparison between TSMC's 7nm & Samsung's 8nm or did you just want to make the claim that numbers are just marketing? Despite the fact that numbers alone were not being talked about, but two specific fab processes, and thus the "it's just a number!" mistake wasn't obviously being made in the first place? But Nvidia has Ampere on both TSMC 7nm (GA100) and Samsung's 8nm (GA102). The TSMC variant has a significantly higher density at 65.6M / mm² vs. 45.1M / mm². Comparing across architectures is murkey, but we also know that the TSMC 7nm 6900XT clocks a lot higher than the Samsung 8nm RTX 3080/3090 while also drawing less power. There's of course a lot more to clock speeds & power draw in an actual product than the raw fab transistor performance, but it's still a data point. So there's both density & performance evidence to suggest TSMC's 7nm is meaningfully better than Samsung's 8nm. Even going off of marketing names, Samsung has a 7nm as well and they don't pretend their 8nm is just one-worse than the 7nm. The 8nm is an evolution of the 10nm node while the 7nm is itself a new node. According to Samsung's marketing flowcharts, anyway. And analysis suggests Samsung's 7nm is competitive with TSMC's 7nm.
- IshKebab 5y agoTSMC have a 56% percent market share. The next closest is Samsung at 18%. I think that's enough to say that everyone uses them without much hyperbole.
- ineedasername 5y agoThis is the point where commenters enter into a pedantic discussion about whether 56% is better suited to the term everyone or the term most. :)
- Animats 5y agoOh, that's disappointing. Intel has three 7nm fabs in the US. There's a lot of fab capacity under construction. 2-3 years out, semiconductor glut again.
- BuckRogers 5y agoThis is a problem for AMD especially, but also Nvidia. Not so much for Intel. They're just budging in line with their superior firepower. Intel even bought out first dibs on TSMC 3nm out from under Apple. I'll be interested to see the market's reaction to this once everyone realizes that Intel is hitting AMD where it hurts and sees the inevitable outcome. This is one of the smartest moves by Intel, make their own stuff and consume production from all their competitors, which do nothing but paper designs. Nvidia and especially AMD took a risk not being in the fabrication business, and now we'll see the full repercussions. It's a good play (outsourcing) in good times, not so much when things get tight like today.
- wmf 5y agoThis is a problem for AMD especially Probably not. AMD has had their N7/N6 orders in for years. They're just budging in line with their superior firepower. Intel even bought out first dibs on TSMC 3nm out from under Apple. There's no evidence this is happening and people with TSMC experience say it's not happening. Nvidia and especially AMD took a risk not being in the fabrication business Yes, and it paid off dramatically. If AMD stayed with their in-house fabs (now GloFo) they'd probably be dead on 14nm now.
- BuckRogers 5y agoDo you have sources for any of your claims? Other than going fabless being a fantastic way to cut costs and management challenges, but increase longterm supply line risk, none of that is anything that I've heard. Here are sources for my claims. AMD on TSMC 3nm for Zen5. Will be squeezed by Intel and Apple- https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-3nm-zen5-apus-codenamed-strix-point-rumored-to-feature-big-little-cores https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-3nm-zen5-apus-codenamed-stri... Intel consuming a good portion of TSMC 3nm- https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/intel-locks-down-all-remaining-tsmc-3nm-production-capacity-boxing-out-amd-and-apple/ar-AANfRXX https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/intel-locks-down-a... I see zero upside with these developments for AMD, and to a lesser degree, Nvidia, who are better diversified with Samsung and also rumored to be in talks with fabricating at Intel as well.
- abledon 5y agoit seems AMD manufactures most 7nm all at TSMC, but intel has a factory coming online next year in Arizona... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si... I could see gov/Military investing/awarding more contracts based on these 'locally' situated plants
- humanistbot 5y agoNope, wiki is wrong. According to Intel, the facility in Chander, AZ will start being built next year, but won't be producing chips until 2024. See https://www.anandtech.com/show/16573/intels-new-strategy-20b-for-two-fabs-meteor-lake-7nm-tiles-new-foundry-services-ibm-collaboration-return-of-idf https://www.anandtech.com/show/16573/intels-new-strategy-20b...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pankajdoharey 5y agoWhat about design capabilities? If they had it in them what were they doing all these yrs? i mean since 2000 i can remember a single GPU from intel that wasnt already behind the market.
- Tsiklon 5y agoRaja Koduri is Intel’s lead architect for their new product line; prior to this he was the lead of the Radeon Technologies Group at AMD, successfully delivering Polaris, Vega and Navi. Navi is AMD’s current GPU product architecture. Things seem promising at this stage.
- deaddodo 5y agoWhere do you get that idea? The third-party fabs have far greater production capacity[1]. Intel isn't even in the top five. They're a shared resource; however, if you're willing to pay the money, you could monopolize their resources and outproduce anybody. 1 - https://epsnews.com/2021/02/10/5-fabs-own-54-of-global-semiconductor-capacity/ https://epsnews.com/2021/02/10/5-fabs-own-54-of-global-semic...
- wtallis 5y agoYou're looking at the wrong numbers. The wafer capacity of memory fabs and logic fabs that are only equipped for older nodes aren't relevant to the GPU market. So Micron, SK hynix, Kioxia/WD and a good chunk of Samsung and TSMC capacity are irrelevant here.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- chaosharmonic 5y agoGiven that timeline and their years of existing production history with Thunderbolt, Intel could also feasibly beat both of them to shipping USB4 on a graphics card.
- pankajdoharey 5y agoI suppose the better thing to do would be to ship an APU, Besting both Nvidia on GPU and AMD on CPU? But can they?
- pier25 5y agoExactly. There are plenty of people that just want to upgrade an old GPU and anything modern would be a massive improvement. I'm still rocking a 1070 for 1080p/60 gaming and would love to jump to 4K/60 gaming but just can't convince myself to buy a new GPU at current prices.
- mey 5y agoI refuse to engage with the current GPU pricing insanity, so my 5900x is currently paired with a 960 GTX. When Intel enters the market it will be another factor in driving pricing back down, so might play Cyberpunk in 2022...
- deadmutex 5y agoIf you really want to play Cyberpunk on PC, and don't want to buy a new GPU.. playing it on Stadia is an option (especially if you have a GPU that can support VP9 decoding). I played it at 4K/1080p, and it looked pretty good. However, I think if you want the best graphics fidelity (i.e. 4K RayTracing), then you probably do want to just get a high end video card. Disclosure: Work at Google, but not on Stadia.
- leeoniya 5y agoi wanna get a good Alyx setup to finally try VR, but with the gpu market the way it is, looks like my RX480 4GB will be sticking around for another 5yrs - it's more expensive now than it was 4 yrs ago (used), and even then it was already 2yrs old. batshit crazy; no other way to describe it :(
- ayngg 5y agoI thought they are using TSMC for their gpu, which means they will be part of the same bottleneck that is affecting everyone else.
- YetAnotherNick 5y agoExcept Apple
- davidjytang 5y agoI believe nvidia doesn't use TSMC or not only use TSMC.
- mkaic 5y ago30 series Nvidia cards are on Samsung silicon iirc
- monocasa 5y agoYeah, Samsung 8nm, which is basically Samsung 10nm++++.
- abraae 5y ago10nm--?
- monocasa 5y agoThe '+' in this case is a common process node trope where improvements to a node over time that involve rules changes become Node+, Node++, Node+++, etc. So this is a node that started as Samsung 10nm, but they made enough changes to it that they started marketing it as 8nm. When they started talking about it, it wasn't clear if it was a more manufacturable 7nm or instead a 10nm with lots of improvements, so I drop the 10nm++++ to help give some context.
- tylerhou 5y agoThe datacenter cards (which are about half of their revenue) are running on TSMC.
- hughrr 5y agoGPU stock is rising and prices falling. It’s too late now.
- rejectedandsad 5y agoI still can’t get a 3080, and the frequency of drops seems to have decreased. Where are you seeing increased stock?
- YetAnotherNick 5y agoNo, they aren't. They are trading at 250% of MSRP. See this data: https://stockx.com/nvidia-nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-graphics-card-founders-edition https://stockx.com/nvidia-nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-graphics-c...
- RussianCow 5y agoAnecdotally, I've noticed prices falling on the lower end. My aging RX 580 was worth over $400 used at the beginning of the year; it now goes for ~$300. The 5700 XT was going for close to $1k used, and is more recently selling for $800-900. With that said, I don't know if it's a sign of the shortage coming to an end; I think the release of the Ryzen 5700G with integrated graphics likely helped bridge the gap for people who wanted low-end graphics without paying the crazy markups.
- rasz 5y agoYou would think that. GamersNexus did try Intels finest, and it doesnt look pretty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSseaknEv9Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSseaknEv9Q We Got an Intel GPU: Intel Iris Xe DG1 Video Card Review, Benchmarks, & Architecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW4U6n-r3_0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW4U6n-r3_0 Intel GPU A Real Threat: Adobe Premiere, Handbrake, & Production Benchmarks on DG1 Iris Xe Its below GT1030 with a lot of issues.
- pitaj 5y agoThis won't be the same as the DG1
- phone8675309 5y agoThe DG1 isn’t designed for gaming, but it is better than integrated graphics.
- deburo 5y agoJust to add on that, DG1 was comparable to integrated graphics, but just in a discrete form factor. It was a tiny bit better because of higher frequency, I think. But even then it wasn't better in all cases, if I recall correctly.
- agloeregrets 5y agoDG1 isn't remotely related to Arc. For one, it's not even using the same node nor architecture.
- deaddodo 5y agoThat's not quite true. The Arc was originally known as the DG2 and is the successor to the DG1. So to say it isn't "remotely related" is a bit misleading, especially since we have very little information on the architecture.
- trynumber9 5y agoFor some comparison, that's a 30W 80EU part using 70GB/s memory. DG2 is supposed to be 512EU part with over 400GB/s memory. GPUs generally scale pretty well with EU count and memory bandwidth. Plus it has a different architecture which may be even more capable per EU.
- mhh__ 5y agoIf they come out swinging here they could have the most deserved smugness in the industry for a good while. People have been rightly criticising them but wrongly writing them off.
- 015a 5y agoYup; three other points I'd add: 1) I hate to say "year of desktop Linux" like every year, but with the Steam Deck release later this year, and Valve's commitment to continue investing and collaborating on Proton to ensure wide-range game support; Linux gaming is going to grow substantially throughout 2022, if only due to the new devices added by Steam Decks. Intel has always had fantastic Linux video driver support. If Arc is competitive with the lowest end current-gen Nvidia/AMD cards (3060?), Linux gamers will love it. And, when thinking about Steam Deck 2 in 2022-2023, Intel becomes an option. 2) The current-gen Nvidia/AMD cards are insane. They're unbelievably powerful. But, here's the kicker: Steam Deck is 720p. You go out and buy a brand new Razer/Alienware/whatever gaming laptop, the most common resolution even on the high end models is 1080p (w/ high refresh rate). The Steam Hardware survey puts 1080p as the most common resolution, and ITS NOT EVEN REMOTELY CLOSE to #2 [1] (720p 8%, 1080p 67%, 1440p 8%, 4k 2%) (did you know more people use Steam on MacOS than on a 4k monitor? lol) These Nvidia/AMD cards are unprecedented overkill for most gamers. People are begging for cards that can run games at 1080p, Nvidia went straight to 4K, even showing off 8K gaming on the 3090, and now they can't even deliver any cards that run 720p/1080p. Today, we've got AMD releasing the 6600XT, advertising it as a beast for 1080p gaming [2]. This is what people actually want; affordable and accessible cards to play games on (whether they can keep the 6600xt in stock remains to be seen, of course). Nvidia went straight Icarus with Ampere; they shot for the sun, and couldn't deliver. 3) More broadly, geopolitical pressure in east asia, and specifically taiwan, should be concerning investors in any company that relies heavily on TSMC (AMD & Apple being the two big ones). Intel may start by fabbing Arc there, but they uniquely have the capacity to bring that production to the west. I am very, very long INTC. [1] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw... [2] https://www.pcmag.com/news/amd-unveils-the-radeon-rx-6600-xt-a-graphics-card-for-power-gaming-at-1080p https://www.pcmag.com/news/amd-unveils-the-radeon-rx-6600-xt...
- brian_herman 5y agoThere are also more reasons to buy nvidia gpus just than their speed they have great driver support, features like RTX Voice which cleans up the audio and other proprietary features like DLSS. Though I would argue that desktop gaming is becoming a thing of the past because mobile gaming is that much more powerful and easier to use and setup.
- dheera 5y ago> will compete with GeForce > which performs a lot like the GDDR5 version of Nvidia's aging, low-end GeForce GTX 1030 Intel is trying to emulate what NVIDIA did a decade ago. Nobody in the NVIDIA world speaks of GeForce and GTX anymore, RTX is where it's at.
- NonContro 5y agoHow long will that situation last though, with Ethereum 2.0 around the corner and the next difficulty bomb scheduled for December? https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/olla5w/eip_3554_or_how_i_learned_to_stop_worrying_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/olla5w/eip_3554_o... Intel could be launching their cards into a GPU surplus... That's discrete GPUs though, presumably the major volumes are in laptop GPUs? Will Intel have a CPU+GPU combo product for laptops?
- orra 5y agoAlas: Bitcoin.
- cinntaile 5y agoYou don't mine bitcoin with a GPU, those days are long gone.
- errantspark 5y ago> How long will that situation last though Probably until at least 2022 because the shortage of GPUs isn't solely because of crypto. Until we generally get back on track tricking sand to think we're not going to be able to saturate demand. > Will Intel have a CPU+GPU combo product for laptops? What? Obviously the answer is yes, how could it possibly be no? CPU+GPU combo is the only GPU related segment where Intel currently has a product.
- NonContro 5y agoTo be more specific, Intel currently allocates a fair chunk of their dies to iGPUs. Will that no longer be the case when Intel manufacturers their own dedicated GPUs? It seems like a waste of silicon.
- dathinab 5y agoIt's not "just" a shortage of GPU's but all kinds of components. And it's also not "just" caused by miners. But that means if they are really unlucky they could launch into a situation where there is a surplus of good second hand graphic cards and still shortages/price hikes on the GPU components they use... Through as far as I can tell they are more targeting OEM's (any OEM instead of a selected few), and other large customers, so it might not matter too much for them for this release (but probably from the next one after one-ward it would).
- ineedasername 5y agoYep, basically anything capable of playing new games at low setting and older > 3yr old games at better settings should be highly competitive in the low-end gaming market.
- ineedasername 5y agoYep, basically anything capable of playing new games on lower setting at 720p, and > 3yr old games at better settings should be highly competitive in the low-end gaming market. Especially laptops where they might be a secondary machine for gamers with a high end desktop.
- moss2 5y agoI thought the problem was a chip shortage. How is Intel going to solve this? Won't they just also run out of stock instantly?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]