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I love these breakdown writeups so much. I'm also hoping that Intel puts out an Arc A770 class upgrade in their B-series line-up. My workstation and my kids'

I love these breakdown writeups so much. I'm also hoping that Intel puts out an Arc A770 class upgrade in their B-series line-up. My workstation and my kids' playroom gaming computer both have A770's, and they've been really amazing for the price I paid, $269 and $190. My triple screen racing sim has an RX 7900 GRE ($499), and of the three the GRE has surprisingly been the least consistently stable (e.g. driver timeouts, crashes). Granted, I came into the new Intel GPU game after they'd gone through 2 solid years of driver quality hell, but I've been really pleased with Intel's uncharacteristic focus and pace of improvement in both the hardware and especially the software. I really hope they keep it up.

999900000999 2y ago
I have a couple of these too, and I strongly believe Intel is effectively subsidizing these to try to get a foothold in the market. You get me equivalent of a $500 Nvidia card for around $300 or less. And it makes sense because Intel knows if they can get a foothold in this market they're that much more valuable to shareholders. Great for gaming, no real downsides imo.
- DeepSeaTortoise 2y ago
  They should drop a $600 card with 128gb of vram. This is just barely possible without losses on every sale. And then just watch heads explode.
  - ryao 2y ago
    At current market pricing on dramexchange, 128GB of 16Gbit GDDR6 chips would cost $499.58. That only leaves $100.42 for the PCB, GPU die, miscellaneous parts, manufacturing, packaging, shipping, the store’s margin, etcetera. I suspect that they could not do that without taking a loss. I wonder if they could mix clamshell mode and quadrank to connect 64 memory chips to a GPU. If they connected 128GB of VRAM to a GPU, I would expect then to sell it for $2000, not $600.
    - DeepSeaTortoise 2y ago
      Yup, just went with the $3 per GB formula. GPU should be about $200 at TSMC (400-450mm2). + about $150 for the pcb, cooler and other stuff, I didn't consider Times a 1.6 to 1.75 factor if they like actually being profitable (operations, rnd, sales, marketing, ...). So about $1.5k, I guess. Multiply that with a .33 "screw the competition" factor and my initial guess is almost spot on. . Real problem: The largest GDDR7 package money can buy right now is 3GB. That's a 1376bit bus right there. GL fitting that to a sub 500mm2 die. In the future you could put that amount of vram on a 512bit bus, tho. Also normal DDR is getting really fast atm. 8 channel can already challenge most vram configurations. Maybe it's time soon to switch back to swappable memory.
      - rasz 2y ago
        >+ about $150 for the pcb, cooler and other stuff, Assuming I had access to gerbers I could order replica of 5090 PCB for $65, including shipping. Intel PCB is half that. Again this is for a dude off the street buying 1-5 copies, not a bulk order.
  - imtringued 2y ago
    This makes no sense. Currently 24GB is the sweet spot to stay competitive and 32GB is the maximum amount of memory you could stick on a card and still have a decent memory to bandwidth ratio. What they should do instead is make the cards thinner and more efficient so that you can easily put two of them in a case.
- ryao 2y ago
  They are definitely selling them at close to no profit, but they are not anywhere near subsidizing them unless they botched their supply chain so badly that they are overpaying the BOM costs.
  - 999900000999 2y ago
    R&D isn't free. Even selling at cost is a subsidy. I'm proud to support them. Intel is also selling their lunar lake chips fairly cheaply too. Let's all hope they make it through this rough patch. I can't imagine a world where we only have one x86 manufacturer.
    - hypothesis 2y ago
      > I can't imagine a world where we only have one x86 manufacturer. Does it even matter? Some people won’t notice even if there are zero x86 manufacturers. In fact I would say lots of people have not bought x86 CPU in while, between Mac, RPi and risc-v boards…
      - 999900000999 2y ago
        X86 is still needed for a lot of software. The emulation just isn't there yet.
        hypothesis 2y ago
        That would be news to people on mac with Rosetta Stone / Crossover.
        999900000999 2y ago
        A lot of server code and specialized software won’t work. Competition is always good
        ryao 2y ago
throwaway48476 2y ago
They won't make a B770 or C770 because they lose money on every card they sell. The prices are low because otherwise they would sell 0 and they already paid for the silicon. The intel graphics division is run by fools who won't give their cards a USP in the SR-IOV feature home labers have been asking for for years. Doing what AMD and Nvidia do but worse is not a profitable strategy. There's a 50% the whole division gets fired in the next year though.
- gruez 2y ago
  >The intel graphics division is run by fools who won't give their cards a USP in the SR-IOV feature home labers have been asking for for years. Intel are "fools" for not adding a feature that maybe a few thousand people care about?
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    A few thousand people is a lot more than the number of gamers who'd buy an Intel GPU at market price. If they don't raise their ASP into the black they're going to ax the whole division. For reference the B580 die is nearly the size of the 4070 but sells for a third the price.
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      > For reference the B580 die is nearly the size of the 4070 but sells for a third the price. Doesn't this suggest the B580 has worse yields? Die surface area isn't directly proportional to selling price.
      - sitkack 2y ago
        Why would it say anything about yields? What is says is that given the die area, Intel fails to capitalize on their chip relative to a 4070.
        throwaway48476 2y ago

999900000999 2y ago

I have a couple of these too, and I strongly believe Intel is effectively subsidizing these to try to get a foothold in the market. You get me equivalent of a $500 Nvidia card for around $300 or less. And it makes sense because Intel knows if they can get a foothold in this market they're that much more valuable to shareholders. Great for gaming, no real downsides imo.

DeepSeaTortoise 2y ago
They should drop a $600 card with 128gb of vram. This is just barely possible without losses on every sale. And then just watch heads explode.
- ryao 2y ago
  At current market pricing on dramexchange, 128GB of 16Gbit GDDR6 chips would cost $499.58. That only leaves $100.42 for the PCB, GPU die, miscellaneous parts, manufacturing, packaging, shipping, the store’s margin, etcetera. I suspect that they could not do that without taking a loss. I wonder if they could mix clamshell mode and quadrank to connect 64 memory chips to a GPU. If they connected 128GB of VRAM to a GPU, I would expect then to sell it for $2000, not $600.
  - DeepSeaTortoise 2y ago
    Yup, just went with the $3 per GB formula. GPU should be about $200 at TSMC (400-450mm2). + about $150 for the pcb, cooler and other stuff, I didn't consider Times a 1.6 to 1.75 factor if they like actually being profitable (operations, rnd, sales, marketing, ...). So about $1.5k, I guess. Multiply that with a .33 "screw the competition" factor and my initial guess is almost spot on. . Real problem: The largest GDDR7 package money can buy right now is 3GB. That's a 1376bit bus right there. GL fitting that to a sub 500mm2 die. In the future you could put that amount of vram on a 512bit bus, tho. Also normal DDR is getting really fast atm. 8 channel can already challenge most vram configurations. Maybe it's time soon to switch back to swappable memory.
    - rasz 2y ago
      >+ about $150 for the pcb, cooler and other stuff, Assuming I had access to gerbers I could order replica of 5090 PCB for $65, including shipping. Intel PCB is half that. Again this is for a dude off the street buying 1-5 copies, not a bulk order.
- imtringued 2y ago
  This makes no sense. Currently 24GB is the sweet spot to stay competitive and 32GB is the maximum amount of memory you could stick on a card and still have a decent memory to bandwidth ratio. What they should do instead is make the cards thinner and more efficient so that you can easily put two of them in a case.
ryao 2y ago
They are definitely selling them at close to no profit, but they are not anywhere near subsidizing them unless they botched their supply chain so badly that they are overpaying the BOM costs.
- 999900000999 2y ago
  R&D isn't free. Even selling at cost is a subsidy. I'm proud to support them. Intel is also selling their lunar lake chips fairly cheaply too. Let's all hope they make it through this rough patch. I can't imagine a world where we only have one x86 manufacturer.
  - hypothesis 2y ago
    > I can't imagine a world where we only have one x86 manufacturer. Does it even matter? Some people won’t notice even if there are zero x86 manufacturers. In fact I would say lots of people have not bought x86 CPU in while, between Mac, RPi and risc-v boards…
    - 999900000999 2y ago
      X86 is still needed for a lot of software. The emulation just isn't there yet.
      - hypothesis 2y ago
        That would be news to people on mac with Rosetta Stone / Crossover.
        999900000999 2y ago
        A lot of server code and specialized software won’t work. Competition is always good
        ryao 2y ago

throwaway48476 2y ago

They won't make a B770 or C770 because they lose money on every card they sell. The prices are low because otherwise they would sell 0 and they already paid for the silicon. The intel graphics division is run by fools who won't give their cards a USP in the SR-IOV feature home labers have been asking for for years. Doing what AMD and Nvidia do but worse is not a profitable strategy. There's a 50% the whole division gets fired in the next year though.

gruez 2y ago
>The intel graphics division is run by fools who won't give their cards a USP in the SR-IOV feature home labers have been asking for for years. Intel are "fools" for not adding a feature that maybe a few thousand people care about?
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  A few thousand people is a lot more than the number of gamers who'd buy an Intel GPU at market price. If they don't raise their ASP into the black they're going to ax the whole division. For reference the B580 die is nearly the size of the 4070 but sells for a third the price.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    > For reference the B580 die is nearly the size of the 4070 but sells for a third the price. Doesn't this suggest the B580 has worse yields? Die surface area isn't directly proportional to selling price.
    - sitkack 2y ago
      Why would it say anything about yields? What is says is that given the die area, Intel fails to capitalize on their chip relative to a 4070.
      - throwaway48476 2y ago