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  • 5080 - Saturday, October 31, 2020 - link

    Interesting, but will OEM's really pick this up? AMD and Nvidia's latest cards will most likely beat the Xe by a large margin and they both come with much more mature drivers. The only real positive coming from this is that there will be another player challenging the duopoly, maybe not in the near future, but years down the road.
  • jeremyshaw - Saturday, October 31, 2020 - link

    Or, like Intel for the past 5 years, this is just another SKU that strings people along.
  • limitedaccess - Saturday, October 31, 2020 - link

    It'll have it's usage criteria at possibly well under <75w and at this moment leading encoder/decoder performance in that class which is likely more appealing for this segment than 3D gaming capabilities.
  • Smell This - Monday, November 9, 2020 - link

    The $99 Ryzen 3 3200G sets the bar rather high in this class ... CPU/GPU 'torture' less than 100w / typical usage 35w +/- maxed at 65w ____ do not see this ending well for the discreet DG1 card
    _______________________________________________________________

    **it should be a good bit better than any comtemporary Atom’s integrated GPU**

    *contemporary*
  • DanNeely - Saturday, October 31, 2020 - link

    NVidia's been selling near-worthless barely faster than an IGP 20-30W graphics cards to OEMs for years. If the company making the intel desktop cards can get the price right, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to sell them. The real question's if they'll also become available in the retail market. Use there's a lot more limited; but minspec card have always been useful for adding additional video outputs for display wall type systems, or to put newer hardware decode into an existing HTPC.
  • willis936 - Sunday, November 1, 2020 - link

    Can you show a single benchmark to support this fantasy?
  • Spunjji - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    A benchmark showing that Nvidia sell near-worthless low-end GPUs to OEMs? How would that work?

    Of course if you want to bet that a GT 710 could compete with Iris Xe or Vega 8, go ahead, throw your money away 😅
  • TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, November 3, 2020 - link

    The GT710 has long been supplanted by the likes of MX 250/350/450 cards. I cant think of a single OEM desktop PC that still uses GT 710s, if they have an entry level card they have the GT 1030.
  • Spunjji - Wednesday, November 4, 2020 - link

    The MX series are all notebook chips - this is about desktop cards. OEMs still bung these POS cards into bottom-tier builds just to fill out a specification.

    Example:
    https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/zoostorm-core-i5-9...
  • smilingcrow - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    Considering how popular Ryzen CPUs are without a dGPU, there is a market for entry level GPUs for those that don’t play games.
    So it would be ironic if Intel were to sell into that market which AMD created.
  • Kjella - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    Eh, having a separate GPU used to be completely normal. Intel took advantage of AMDs weak high end CPUs offerings to embed a GPU in all mainstream Intel processors starting with Sandy Bridge in 2011 and killed most of that market. So Ryzen is just a return to how it used to be up to 2010 or so.

    But I suspect that between both Intel and AMD having better integrated offerings and GPUs being much more useful for compute etc. the market for low-end cards is still small. If it's for a business desktop you just send it back for a warranty claim anyway and gamers usually have a bunch of older cards to fill the slot. Pure CPU-heavy tasks that can't be GPU accelerated are becoming rare.
  • smilingcrow - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    Let me rephrase and say recreated then.
    There's a market but as the selling price is low there isn't a large profit so it doesn't get much love.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, November 3, 2020 - link

    That started with mobile Nehalem in 2010
  • AntonErtl - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    Exactly. We put a low-end card into every Ryzen-based server we build. It used to be an AMD R5 230 or HD6450, but supply is low and prices have risen (are they no longer produced?), so we bit the bullet and put an Nvidia 710 in the latest box despite Nvidia's lack of support for free software (fortunately text mode works on the Nvidia card without a proprietary driver). An Intel card would be a welcome entry in this market that AMD has abandoned despite having recreated it.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, November 3, 2020 - link

    The HD 6000 series has long been out of production, and I believe AMD has cut production of their 200 series many moons ago in favor of APUs. The stock of the cards is likely running out.
  • dotes12 - Tuesday, November 3, 2020 - link

    You should be able to find used R5/R7 240 on eBay, but maybe buying used GPUs for production servers isn't a great idea. There's a ton of Dell OEM stuff out there, and they're low profile too.
  • vladx - Saturday, October 31, 2020 - link

    Yes it will be very competitive for batch video processing.
  • sing_electric - Saturday, October 31, 2020 - link

    Intel can certainly get OEMs to put pretty much anything in a system if they make it worth their while - cf. Lenovo's China-only Cannon Lake laptop that had to ship with a dGPU because their integrated graphics don't work, just so Intel could claim to investors that they were shipping 10nm products.

    The real question is if Intel can get these in machines based on merit at a price that generates profit, at least on a per-unit basis
  • nico_mach - Sunday, November 1, 2020 - link

    Right, and does having a low end OEM-only dgpu really change anything? Perhaps if it's configured and sold more for AI work? Pre-built desktop are more likely to be built for that than anything else.
  • Spunjji - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    I'm sure Intel will find a way to incentivize some sales in the meantime.
  • Byte - Wednesday, November 4, 2020 - link

    There are a LOT of users who don't game. I suspect this should help most of these use cases. Good for accelerating Adobe Suite, CAD, Video Encoding, Data Processing/AI.

    Gaming cards have always been kinda hit and miss for those purposes. Good to see more of a "Media Processor" be available.
  • silencer12 - Wednesday, November 11, 2020 - link

    Quote "AMD and Nvidia's latest cards will most likely beat the Xe by a large margin and they both come with much more mature drivers"

    Intel hired former AMD senior graphics VP to design their graphics at Intel three years ago. I doubt the large margin. Intel also hired another AMD executive last year. "Masooma Bhaiwala" to head their graphics department.

    You should look it up.
  • igor velky - Saturday, October 31, 2020 - link

    But im really interested what products will Apple put this in...
  • tipoo - Sunday, November 1, 2020 - link

    None? I'm going with none. They've already announced their transition to in house ARM chips and the first macs with it will be shown this November. There's really not much space for this weak IGP turned dedicated GPU in their line anyways.
  • desii - Saturday, October 31, 2020 - link

    I imagine there have to be people like me, who don't want a big power hungry gaming card, but still want to handle several screens (via DP) without stuttering.
    AMD doesn't make such cards anymore, so that leaves just Nvidia, with products like the 1030 (only 2 outputs) or the 1650. If Intel can offer something comparable with good drivers I'd be very interested.
    >just use integrated graphics
    Well, AMD CPUs don't have that, except in their somewhat gimped APUs. And I'm not interested in Intel CPUs right now (assuming their integrated graphics is even good enough for multiple high res screens).
  • 5080 - Saturday, October 31, 2020 - link

    Matrox still makes multi display cards. Mostly used for digital signage.
  • vladx - Saturday, October 31, 2020 - link

    Matrox unfortunately uses Nvidia GPUs underneath.
  • thunderbird32 - Tuesday, November 3, 2020 - link

    Didn't that just recently happen though? I don't think anything they currently have on the market uses NVIDIA GPUs.
  • thomasg - Saturday, October 31, 2020 - link

    AMD still does have such a card, although they themselves consider it very niche and don't advertise it to any relevant degree.
    That card is the Sapphire GPRO 4300, a specialiced Polaris variant only sold via Sapphire, and offers 4 DisplayPorts for a lower price than any comparable nVidia offering.

    For the customers that needf signed GL drivers, there's also the WX 3200, which basically offers the same for the same price.

    So AMD still has offerings for that segment, but since its a niche segment, there's also few models made.
  • p1esk - Sunday, November 1, 2020 - link

    This will not compete well with 3060 or 3050 down the line.
  • Ej24 - Sunday, November 1, 2020 - link

    Get a cheap entry level Quadro (p620) or Radeon Pro. (Wx 3100). Most have at least 4 dp output. Are tiny, single slot, 45W tdp. Used on ebay for $100
  • Spunjji - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    The performance on this one will be broadly equivalent to the desktop 1030, and some way short of the 1650.

    You're also right to be wary of Intel's iGPU running multiple high-res screens. It just doesn't cope well.
  • Alistair - Saturday, October 31, 2020 - link

    That is some real confidence! Only in OEM's where they can pay people to put it in, not even for sale to DIYs. What a fail.
  • shabby - Sunday, November 1, 2020 - link

    Yup we'll be seeing these in $500 acer gaming desktops 🤭
  • Alistair - Sunday, November 1, 2020 - link

    You can buy an 11th gen Tiger Lake laptop with the GPU integrated and it performs about the same for $750 right now, but if you want the discrete Max graphics with the GPU integrated and almost zero extra performance, pay $1500. Just crazy. This product is DOA.
  • dotes12 - Tuesday, November 3, 2020 - link

    I've been disappointed with the OEMs, because it's obvious that they intentionally cut costs in a way that makes it difficult to upgrade your system. It used to only be giving you 2 RAM slots instead of 4, but now it's creating unique PSU form factors to prevent you from replacing it with an ATX/STX PSU, and even making the motherboard backplate integrated into the chassis so you can't take the motherboard and put it into a new chassis without it looking dumb. They also dropped the 24 pin ATX motherboard standard as well. All these things add up to making it almost impossible to add a graphics card to most OEM systems that requires more than the 75W PCIe can supply. I remember the first OEM system I got didn't even have a slot for adding a graphics card, they literally just didn't solder the PCIe (or maybe AGP?) connector to the board!
  • Soulkeeper - Saturday, October 31, 2020 - link

    I'm actually really interested in this.
    Even if the performance is poor compared to AMD/Nvidia.
    Intel is still a gorilla in the room when it comes to driver/software support for their products.
    The linux support will be top notch, these would be great for linux users imo.
  • vladx - Saturday, October 31, 2020 - link

    Well said, driver quality and support from Intel is stellar, even beats NVidia in terms of reliability.
  • KompuKare - Sunday, November 1, 2020 - link

    This keeps being repeated all the time. And it may be true for certain things.
    For graphics, Intel drivers are stable - just don't expect updates to cope with new games!
    However, for WiFi cards - despite Intel's great reputation for NICs - their drivers aren't always that great.
    Have Thinkpad T540p which came with the Intel N 7260 card. After Windows 10 came out, there was one driver which didn't work very well. Thinkpad forums said that Intel weren't going to do any more Win10 drivers for that card (it predated Win10 by about a year but was still on sale at the time AFAIR). So I 'downgraded' the Realtech RTL8192 based card: Win10 drivers were stable from the go and I've never looked back.
    I noticed that Intel eventually relented as Lenovo now have more recent drivers for that card, but can't be bothered to swap back.
  • Spunjji - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    vladx is a shill, nuance isn't their thing 🤷‍♂️
  • lmcd - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    Intel's support lifecycle for wireless cards and its performance during the support window are quite different. Intel's support lifecycle might not be perfect but its performance as compared to Qualcomm and Realtek is far superior in my experience. A recent, decent dual-band Realtek ping spiking to over 200ms locally, 8 ft and one wall away (vs ~20ms spikes for an Intel dual-band card). I've also watched a Qualcomm unit fail to properly do WiFi handoff way too many times at work in spite of correctly-configured roaming.

    Also worth remembering these are entirely different teams in the company.
  • Spunjji - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    🤭 Someone's never tried running games on Intel GPU drivers...
  • vladx - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    GPUs are not used only for gaming, your trolling is so obvious. AnandTech themselves said these iGPUs are not targeting gamers as their main audience.
  • Alistair - Saturday, October 31, 2020 - link

    These are worth $50 USD?
  • eastcoast_pete - Sunday, November 1, 2020 - link

    Any words on what kind of RAM those desktop cards will use?
  • shabby - Sunday, November 1, 2020 - link

    Does it matter? Selling to oems only is clearly an admission that the cards will be slow.
  • Spunjji - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    Presumably LPDDR4X
  • brucethemoose - Sunday, November 1, 2020 - link

    No AV1 encode though :(

    That would've been a killer use case.
  • Alexvrb - Sunday, November 1, 2020 - link

    "DG1 is not expected to be significantly more powerful than Tiger Lake integrated ... it should be a good bit better than any comtemporary Atom’s integrated GPU."

    I think you're looking at this all wrong, Ryan. DG1 discrete isn't much more powerful than TOP OF THE LINE Tiger Lake ($Texas). Compared to the kind of CPUs it will be paired with (older architectures, lower-end TGL - basically various chips with cut-down or NO graphics, even AMD) it will be a GREAT performer. If you use the i3 1125G4 as a comparison point, full DG1 has ~2.5X more raw power and more memory bandwidth. On the desktop you could potentially achieve the same (or slightly better) gaming results using a cheap i3 quad and a cheap DG1 as you could get from a top-line Intel chip... at a lower total cost.

    I don't think they'll pair many of these with Atom-class CPUs, nor too many 2C Core models. But there's a lot of budget 4C chips out there which could be utilized in entry level gaming rigs with a cheap dGPU, especially overseas.
  • Alistair - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    and yet the first model is just Tiger Lake G7 paired with XE MAX which makes no sense. XE MAX is so slow, I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Even integrated AMD can equal it. I was expecting XE MAX to be double the speed of G7 or AMD integrated, not be the same.

    This is way to slow for any entry level laptop. RTX 3050 is coming in months for laptops.
  • Alexvrb - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    We're talking about a desktop DG1 graphics card, per the article. The comparison points are only given for perspective. Ryan was trying to compare these cards to top-line 96 EU TGL chips. These desktop GPUs are meant to be paired with chips with lesser/no GPUs. I'm saying that a desktop TGL with 1125G4-like EU config, or any other low-end quad chips will see a massive jump in GPU performance.
  • PeachNCream - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    I am pretty excited about Intel reentering the dGPU space. We badly need competition in terms of lower TDP and power demand graphics. Very few dGPUs can be fully powered by the PCIe slot which closes a lot of doors in terms of upgrading older computers with modern graphics adapters. That, I feel, generates lots of electronics waste because even a lowly Ivy Bridge i5 has enough CPU to run most modern titles well as long as it has a graphics card with sufficient power. However, many such computers are available from OEMs that have poor or no upgrade options in terms of power supplies necessary to support something other than a GT 1030. Should Intel bring competition in the lower TDP range, that will be helpful for those of us looking for a modest gaming experience using lower end or older systems.
  • Spunjji - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    Xe Max can't even outperform a GTX 1050, so it's not really bringing anything new to the sector. Performance per watt of Xe appears to be somewhere short of RDNA and Turing.

    If (big if, admittedly) AMD and Nvidia decide to bring their new architectures back to the low end, it's toast.
  • lmcd - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    The last PCIe-powered card Nvidia released had a dated encoder, and neither one will be wasting 8nm or 7nm capacity on this. Imo the best thing Intel could do is swap this to their 14nm backported version for desktop and let it clock up like crazy with the headroom and low leakage they have on their extremely mature process. Perhaps the memory controller isn't backported though.
  • PeachNCream - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link

    I would be happy if it outperformed a GT 1030 and was in the same ~30W TDP range. The GTX 1050, if you can get one of the slot-powered versions, still pushes some weaker OEM desktop PSUs a little too hard for comfort. Some OEMs also only rated their PCIe 16x slots for around 37W max power draw so a 1050 is often a bit too much leaving the system owner stuck with a 1030, iGPU, or one of a handful of very inadequate alternatives.
  • lagittaja - Wednesday, November 4, 2020 - link

    I'd buy one
  • JayNor - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    Since Intel's Rocket Lake-S and Tiger Lake-H will come with 20 PCIE4 lanes, it would make sense if the DG1 desktop cards are available with 16 lane support.

    However, there have also been rumors of Xe-HPG/DG2 launching in the same timeframe as Tiger Lake-H (see notebookcheck article on 9/17/2020)

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