WEBVTT 00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:07.120 i am hands-on with the Intel arc a770 00:00:03.360 --> 00:00:09.679 this is their top spec gaming GPU and it 00:00:07.120 --> 00:00:13.280 is very much an unreleased product that means that our test systems needed to be 00:00:11.679 --> 00:00:18.560 disconnected from the internet data collection needed to be disabled and we 00:00:15.200 --> 00:00:21.359 will definitely need to avoid revealing 00:00:18.560 --> 00:00:27.359 any FPS counters so that we don't leak any sensitive performance numbers if i 00:00:24.080 --> 00:00:27.359 care about keeping my promise 00:00:28.080 --> 00:00:33.920 with that out of the way is Intel arc good should you be excited for when they 00:00:31.920 --> 00:00:38.879 launch probably soon and should you listen to this segway to our sponsor 00:00:35.760 --> 00:00:41.120 smart deploy now powered by pdq.com it's 00:00:38.879 --> 00:00:46.960 zero touch zero headache pc management for it you can deploy Windows apps and 00:00:43.760 --> 00:00:48.559 drivers from the cloud no vpn required 00:00:46.960 --> 00:00:52.800 get your free subscription worth over 500 at smartdeploy.com 00:00:51.200 --> 00:00:55.960 Linus we're going to have that linked down below 00:01:02.640 --> 00:01:09.680 i guess we can drop the pretense right behind me are two systems with identical 00:01:07.439 --> 00:01:13.760 specs running the same game one would expect then for them to have the same 00:01:11.119 --> 00:01:18.799 level of performance but clearly based purely on my eyes and not on the 00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:23.360 clearly visible FPS counters this one is performing a lot better 00:01:22.159 --> 00:01:27.360 so what's going on here the performance 00:01:25.520 --> 00:01:31.520 disparity between these two systems is actually a big part of the reason that 00:01:29.200 --> 00:01:35.840 Intel flew up here to show us the current state of things the one on your 00:01:33.600 --> 00:01:41.680 right is running in directx 12 mode while the other one is in directx 11. so 00:01:39.119 --> 00:01:46.399 rather than let me puzzle over why this would be our good friends ryan shrout 00:01:44.079 --> 00:01:50.880 and tom peterson sat down with us to talk about the state of things the arc 00:01:48.240 --> 00:01:55.920 team targeted new standards hard we have av-1 decode and encode support and our 00:01:53.840 --> 00:02:00.960 lightweight driver is very good at speaking directly to the GPU hardware in 00:01:58.079 --> 00:02:05.680 dx12 and vulkan making full use of its capabilities by the way the water in 00:02:03.280 --> 00:02:10.800 this insulated bottle is both cold and refreshing lttstore.com 00:02:08.959 --> 00:02:15.360 i made him say that the part i'm not going to make him say remember my 00:02:12.560 --> 00:02:20.480 promise is that in directx 11 and 10 and 9 and etc 00:02:18.480 --> 00:02:25.599 that's not really the case the thing is in those earlier versions 00:02:22.720 --> 00:02:31.120 of directx to ease development there are loads of apis and driver baggage between 00:02:28.959 --> 00:02:36.720 the game and the GPU now the performance can obviously still 00:02:33.680 --> 00:02:39.440 be good but it takes a lot of tweaking 00:02:36.720 --> 00:02:45.280 in the drivers and the game before it all works great which competitors like 00:02:42.560 --> 00:02:48.319 NVIDIA and AMD have had literally decades to work on 00:02:47.599 --> 00:02:55.760 so the short version of the bad news then is that in a lot of situations a game 00:02:52.800 --> 00:03:00.400 won't be taking full advantage of an arc GPU and one of the worst examples of 00:02:58.160 --> 00:03:05.360 this is here in shadow of the tomb raider where they drop 00:03:02.080 --> 00:03:08.400 half of the performance going from dx12 00:03:05.360 --> 00:03:13.200 to dx11 sorry excuse me my promise they 00:03:08.400 --> 00:03:15.440 double going from dx11 to dx12 00:03:13.200 --> 00:03:18.879 the point is however they want to spin it there's a lot of work to be done and 00:03:17.120 --> 00:03:22.879 this optimization dance isn't one that can be done alone putting Intel in a 00:03:20.640 --> 00:03:28.560 very challenging predicament the cold hard truth is that unfortunately for 00:03:25.280 --> 00:03:32.560 team blue gamers do not exclusively play 00:03:28.560 --> 00:03:35.120 directx 12 and vulcan games making arc 00:03:32.560 --> 00:03:40.400 a bit of a tough sell until it's more optimized as for game developers well 00:03:38.239 --> 00:03:45.280 why would they optimize for arc unless there's a large enough install base 00:03:42.720 --> 00:03:48.879 see the chicken and egg problem here let's talk about the three-tier strategy 00:03:47.040 --> 00:03:52.480 that Intel is planning to use then to beat this chicken and egg into a 00:03:50.400 --> 00:03:56.720 delicious omelet at what we're calling tier one we're going to kill everyone in 00:03:54.560 --> 00:04:00.799 price to performance and in these tier one titles that work really well on arc 00:03:59.040 --> 00:04:04.480 we've already revealed some of them we're going to be best in class 00:04:02.319 --> 00:04:08.959 performance outright just like that Floatplane has the best behind the 00:04:06.720 --> 00:04:11.959 scenes and exclusive LTT content Floatplane.com 00:04:12.239 --> 00:04:18.959 let's take a look then at some of those tier one games here's cyberpunk running 00:04:16.079 --> 00:04:22.880 at quick preset high and 00:04:20.040 --> 00:04:27.040 1440p oh wow okay that's a higher resolution than i was actually expecting 00:04:24.720 --> 00:04:31.360 them to want to show off here oh no i don't have an FPS counter but i could 00:04:28.800 --> 00:04:34.880 probably approximate it oh it's hard for me to tell for sure this has got to be 00:04:33.440 --> 00:04:40.400 somewhere in the like 50 to 65 FPS range if i had 00:04:39.440 --> 00:04:45.199 to guess cyberpunk's a little chunky and a 00:04:42.800 --> 00:04:48.639 little teary and we're not using any kind of variable refresh rate right now 00:04:46.960 --> 00:04:52.639 i'd say it's actually higher than that alex what do you think 00:04:51.040 --> 00:04:57.840 uh i agree you agree 00:04:55.440 --> 00:05:00.960 thanks i fortunately turned on my FPS counter well i'm just running a 00:04:59.199 --> 00:05:06.240 benchmark but you know that's that's my job in f120 21 we're getting 180 FPS at 00:05:04.800 --> 00:05:12.320 1440p highest settings which is impressive but 00:05:08.720 --> 00:05:13.600 f1 2021 is a lighter title honestly i'm 00:05:12.320 --> 00:05:17.919 more impressed by the fact that cyberpunk is running at all given what a hog this game is 00:05:16.960 --> 00:05:23.199 now these are tier 1 games though they're not going to let us show you any tier 2 00:05:21.840 --> 00:05:27.360 games yet so i have banished them from hosting 00:05:25.600 --> 00:05:32.080 any more of the video but i am at least allowed to talk about 00:05:29.039 --> 00:05:34.080 them the second tier is your less 00:05:32.080 --> 00:05:38.800 optimized games but ones that are built on modern apis like directx 12 and 00:05:36.400 --> 00:05:41.840 vulcan these are still going to perform pretty well for the reasons that we 00:05:40.320 --> 00:05:48.080 discussed before tier 3 is where things get 00:05:44.880 --> 00:05:50.479 a little dicey in direct x11 or earlier 00:05:48.080 --> 00:05:55.919 arc doesn't always do very well and while we sorry i had something in my eye 00:05:53.680 --> 00:05:59.919 there weren't able to run any tier 3 games ourselves on the a70 there have 00:05:58.320 --> 00:06:06.400 been enough arc performance leaks out there to show you that yeah it can be a 00:06:03.199 --> 00:06:08.319 little rough but Intel has no illusions 00:06:06.400 --> 00:06:12.800 about this reality and they know that gamers expect to play a wide variety of 00:06:10.880 --> 00:06:17.840 games that they can download at random out of the literally tens of 00:06:15.680 --> 00:06:21.680 thousands of titles on steam fire it up and get acceptable bug-free 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:26.000 performance so being self-aware that there are going to 00:06:23.600 --> 00:06:31.199 be some arc compromises and that there are some silicon surplus issues to work 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:32.960 around they have a bold plan and the 00:06:31.199 --> 00:06:36.960 actual real buckets of money to turn that bold plan into a reality 00:06:35.280 --> 00:06:42.720 you guys ready Intel is going to be basing their 00:06:39.280 --> 00:06:46.560 pricing off of their internal testing of 00:06:42.720 --> 00:06:48.880 third tier games 00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:53.840 now they still won't tell us how much the a7d is going to cost but what we do 00:06:52.080 --> 00:06:56.880 have is some data points that lead us to believe there are going to be some 00:06:55.199 --> 00:07:01.759 pretty happy gamers first up is the general state of the 00:06:58.720 --> 00:07:03.840 industry rumors abound that NVIDIA is 00:07:01.759 --> 00:07:08.880 trying to cancel or at least delay manufacturing of a large chunk of their 00:07:06.000 --> 00:07:13.520 upcoming 40 series gpus and it's pretty safe to say that given the recent mining 00:07:10.639 --> 00:07:17.919 crash AMD is probably in a similar boat we guessed then that Intel probably also 00:07:16.080 --> 00:07:21.759 overproduced arc silicon based on projections that they might have made 00:07:19.599 --> 00:07:26.479 during the surge in demand for gaming pcs during the extended coveted 00:07:23.599 --> 00:07:31.280 lockdowns over the last couple of years i think then that it's pretty safe to 00:07:28.400 --> 00:07:34.400 say that aspirations for a large install base aside 00:07:32.560 --> 00:07:39.199 they just plain have some inventory to move 00:07:35.599 --> 00:07:41.599 next while the a70 especially this sexy 00:07:39.199 --> 00:07:45.919 limited edition RGB card doesn't have an announced price or launch date they have 00:07:43.759 --> 00:07:51.039 actually launched smart silicon this is the a380 and its performance 00:07:48.479 --> 00:07:56.319 isn't particularly exciting but its price is 00:07:52.960 --> 00:07:58.960 starting at 129 usd msrp with six gigs 00:07:56.319 --> 00:08:03.199 of gdr6 memory and enough performance for 1080p gaming and light titles this 00:08:01.199 --> 00:08:08.560 thing would have been an absolute godsend during the shortages and still 00:08:06.720 --> 00:08:12.560 even without the shortages presents a value proposition that i wouldn't have 00:08:09.919 --> 00:08:15.280 thought possible it's an entry-level GPU that you're not a complete idiot for 00:08:14.240 --> 00:08:20.000 buying next up is the rapidly improving state 00:08:17.919 --> 00:08:23.199 of arc on the software side the last time we looked at it we said and rightly 00:08:22.240 --> 00:08:27.919 so sorry that Intel should be embarrassed 00:08:25.680 --> 00:08:32.479 to launch a product in that state but in the three short weeks since then they 00:08:29.360 --> 00:08:34.320 have fixed almost every issue we raised 00:08:32.479 --> 00:08:38.000 and we have some background on what happened with a couple of them 00:08:36.159 --> 00:08:40.800 first up was the problem with Windows update constantly rolling back our 00:08:39.680 --> 00:08:44.959 drivers so what happened was there's all this 00:08:42.800 --> 00:08:50.000 random hardware on your platform like all these chips all these cards right 00:08:47.440 --> 00:08:52.720 and everything has an id that Windows uses to find the right driver for your 00:08:51.680 --> 00:08:57.600 hardware every manufacturer has their own id it's 00:08:55.200 --> 00:09:02.240 a four digit string fun fact Intel's is 8086 and then there's also an id for the 00:09:00.720 --> 00:09:08.000 device itself so that's easy then right this driver 00:09:04.800 --> 00:09:10.720 goes with this pair of ids 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:13.839 well on laptops there's kind of two manufacturers if you think about it and 00:09:12.720 --> 00:09:20.080 therefore two sets of ids one for the silicon 00:09:16.800 --> 00:09:21.519 vendor and one for the system maker now 00:09:20.080 --> 00:09:27.360 there's a good reason for this historically oems like dell or hp needed 00:09:25.279 --> 00:09:32.560 to have unique ids for their implementation of hardware like a GPU 00:09:29.760 --> 00:09:36.640 say to specify any power constraints or display output capabilities 00:09:34.720 --> 00:09:42.800 that means that when Windows update found two driver matches for our GPU one 00:09:39.839 --> 00:09:47.680 from Intel directly and one specific one from hp 00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:50.160 with both sets of ids it made sense that 00:09:47.680 --> 00:09:54.080 it would prefer the hp specific one to avoid any unintended driver woes for the 00:09:52.560 --> 00:09:58.240 user the long-term fix for this then is that 00:09:55.920 --> 00:10:02.399 Intel's first party driver will need to take precedence and all oems will have 00:10:00.560 --> 00:10:07.120 to get on board wow it must be nice to be Intel as for the battery life issues 00:10:05.519 --> 00:10:12.720 that's a bit more complicated and has to do with power states 00:10:08.720 --> 00:10:15.200 g2 is a high power idle state about 40 00:10:12.720 --> 00:10:21.040 watts and that's where we were stuck now arc supports g8 which is more like a 10 00:10:18.320 --> 00:10:25.440 watt idle power state but unfortunately they were in the final stages of 00:10:22.399 --> 00:10:26.959 enabling that state in the driver and so 00:10:25.440 --> 00:10:31.120 it wasn't there yet it will be along with other fixes in 00:10:29.519 --> 00:10:34.560 august even with future driver updates though 00:10:32.959 --> 00:10:38.399 there are some caveats that you potential art customers should be aware 00:10:36.480 --> 00:10:42.640 of and i'd say the biggest one is your system's support for resizable bar 00:10:41.200 --> 00:10:46.079 it's a feature that you enable in your bio so you can go check if it's there 00:10:44.480 --> 00:10:51.120 and it's a bit complicated so i'm not going to go into the full details right 00:10:47.680 --> 00:10:53.600 now but basically an arcgpus memory 00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:58.880 controller benefits a lot from being able to execute fewer larger data 00:10:56.320 --> 00:11:03.360 transfers rather than many many smaller ones when it's loading textures shaders 00:11:01.279 --> 00:11:08.959 geometry or anything else that goes from the CPU to the GPU with that said arc 00:11:06.800 --> 00:11:12.640 also has some competitive advantages that we touched on in our last video and 00:11:11.120 --> 00:11:17.200 they haven't gone away when it works it is an encoding 00:11:14.800 --> 00:11:21.040 powerhouse i mean av1 encoding in particular is the kind of thing that 00:11:18.640 --> 00:11:25.440 you're unlikely to care about today but could actually be the difference between 00:11:23.360 --> 00:11:30.240 this thing is a paperweight and i could still use this in my secondary 00:11:27.040 --> 00:11:32.720 machine or my plex server five six seven 00:11:30.240 --> 00:11:36.959 years from now it also has a lot of dedicated silicon for machine learning 00:11:34.399 --> 00:11:42.480 driven features like ai upscaling though i wasn't able to test that either 00:11:39.040 --> 00:11:44.320 what i can test is overclocking 00:11:42.480 --> 00:11:48.880 performance tuning performance tuning now do note that they they screwed it up 00:11:46.959 --> 00:11:56.160 and they don't have an apply thing so just it's it's a live slider it's a live 00:11:51.440 --> 00:11:58.399 slider oh better better not you know 00:11:56.160 --> 00:12:03.519 the performance boost it basically it changes your vf curve am i right yep 00:12:00.480 --> 00:12:05.120 yeah okay so if you have better again 00:12:03.519 --> 00:12:10.160 it's a little early but go for it you know okay yeah if you have better silicon than normal you might be able to 00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:13.519 just okay boost it up a bit i just like fire my game back up and i might have 00:12:11.680 --> 00:12:17.360 like boosted performance oh i guess we can actually see our clocks am i i'm am 00:12:15.839 --> 00:12:21.680 i allowed to show those i'm not sure if that's working right but 00:12:19.360 --> 00:12:24.959 oh yeah it seems to be locked the GPU temperature is locked at 69 degrees 00:12:23.360 --> 00:12:28.480 celsius there's no way i believe that's no no i think that's true that's true 00:12:26.720 --> 00:12:32.560 you think that's true yeah nice i don't think that CPU activity is 00:12:30.720 --> 00:12:36.959 right at four percent though yeah that's good yeah that's probably a little wrong 00:12:34.560 --> 00:12:40.800 i can't tell is this placebo or is this actually a little faster 00:12:38.399 --> 00:12:43.680 i think it is i'm getting less tearing i think it might actually be faster i 00:12:42.320 --> 00:12:48.560 think it's working okay you told me this wasn't going to work did it just crash it more and then 00:12:47.120 --> 00:12:53.440 you'll crash it well there's no reason to have a temperature limit i don't care about any of that okay should i turn the 00:12:51.200 --> 00:12:56.720 power limit up yeah why not i mean yeah should be 00:12:54.959 --> 00:12:59.680 fine right yeah what could go wrong yeah what could go wrong so none of that 00:12:58.399 --> 00:13:04.320 changed yeah also i think i'm getting more tearing 00:13:02.480 --> 00:13:07.920 which doesn't necessarily actually mean that performance is worse tearing is a 00:13:06.160 --> 00:13:11.600 function of your frame rate versus your refresh rate and it's a little more 00:13:10.079 --> 00:13:16.240 complex than just better FPS tearing go away 00:13:13.920 --> 00:13:20.959 but what i am seeing is looked like i was getting multiple tears 00:13:18.480 --> 00:13:25.120 for a second there which could actually mean that our FPS went up you saw that 00:13:23.120 --> 00:13:29.360 yes are you sure you hit alt-eye again you can do it in game and you'll get a 00:13:26.880 --> 00:13:34.480 big display oh it's working oh wait it's working yeah oh this is this is working 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:39.040 yeah oh oh well that's cool it's very clear that this is definitely 00:13:36.959 --> 00:13:43.279 performing better than we started so the overclocking utility works far 00:13:41.040 --> 00:13:46.639 better than alex told me it was i mean should we give her more beans 00:13:45.839 --> 00:13:51.600 sure what a great idea oh 00:13:49.680 --> 00:13:55.519 oh ah see that means it works though 00:13:53.519 --> 00:14:00.560 just like this segway to our sponsor micro center micro center is one of the 00:13:58.079 --> 00:14:04.959 best places to shop for desktops laptops computer components and all of your 00:14:02.320 --> 00:14:09.199 technology needs get the best prices and best selection on computer hardware at 00:14:06.959 --> 00:14:15.199 any one of micro center's 25 locations 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