WEBVTT 00:00:00.060 --> 00:00:05.759 who in their right mind would choose anything but the best possible solution 00:00:03.780 --> 00:00:11.340 for the money I've never been able to figure it out but then against my 00:00:07.980 --> 00:00:15.000 deepest instincts that is exactly what I 00:00:11.340 --> 00:00:17.400 did and me for 30 days we have both been 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:22.199 running Intel Arc gpus in our primary gaming rigs dealing with everything from 00:00:19.100 --> 00:00:24.420 Annoying software to low performance 00:00:22.199 --> 00:00:28.560 drivers to Broken functionality I haven't been able to play Minecraft 00:00:25.320 --> 00:00:30.900 dungeons with my kids in a month yikes 00:00:28.560 --> 00:00:36.300 but then I don't know what maybe halfway through about halfway I think yeah yeah 00:00:33.420 --> 00:00:41.280 something happened I stopped doing the arc Challenge and I started just using 00:00:39.420 --> 00:00:45.239 my computer yeah I kind of just forgot about it I still have some bones to pick 00:00:43.140 --> 00:00:50.280 with Intel's GPU team to be very clear but like that urgent feeling I had to 00:00:47.760 --> 00:00:54.480 just like work it out of my computer well it's been replaced with like I'm 00:00:52.559 --> 00:00:58.500 gonna do it still but uh I'll get around to it get around to it eventually right 00:00:55.980 --> 00:01:03.000 most of the problems I was having were more related to potentially the 00:01:00.539 --> 00:01:08.340 applications or games that just have problems all the time like we play Star 00:01:05.159 --> 00:01:09.780 Citizen yeah well like and sure there 00:01:08.340 --> 00:01:14.460 was problems but it was Star Citizen I played tarkov same deal not many of the 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:20.880 issues were clearly attributable to just the arc GPU itself and we're obviously 00:01:16.920 --> 00:01:23.700 not the only ones the a770 has 4.3 eggs 00:01:20.880 --> 00:01:28.740 out of five on NewEgg and just shy of four stars on Amazon for a product we 00:01:26.400 --> 00:01:32.580 wrote off then rooted for then completely wrote off 00:01:30.720 --> 00:01:38.220 that's kind of outstanding pretty good pretty good like our sponsor thorum 00:01:36.060 --> 00:01:43.200 thorum makes elegant rings out of unique materials from meteorite to dinosaur 00:01:39.900 --> 00:01:46.880 bone use code LTT to get 20 off today 00:01:43.200 --> 00:01:46.880 and stay tuned to learn more 00:01:47.579 --> 00:01:54.420 foreign 00:01:54.420 --> 00:02:00.240 for the conspiracy theorists out there no this challenge was not sponsored by 00:01:58.680 --> 00:02:04.920 Intel and what better way to prove it than to open with all the things that 00:02:02.040 --> 00:02:10.200 went wrong a lot of things went wrong first up is my issues with VR I did 00:02:08.039 --> 00:02:15.840 eventually get it working thanks to a closed alpha driver from Intel but 00:02:13.140 --> 00:02:19.860 to say that it's not ideal would be an understatement I can mostly play 00:02:17.760 --> 00:02:25.080 stationary games like beat saber but anything even marginally more demanding 00:02:22.080 --> 00:02:27.060 especially with movement is a big 00:02:25.080 --> 00:02:30.900 problem I can only play the virtual reality Rick and Morty game for about 20 00:02:29.280 --> 00:02:36.480 minutes at a time for example before succumbing to nausea so just like in our 00:02:33.720 --> 00:02:42.480 last challenge VR was essentially a no-go for me and even worse that 00:02:39.300 --> 00:02:45.480 marginal VR experience cost me basic 00:02:42.480 --> 00:02:47.640 functionality on the same PC here in the 00:02:45.480 --> 00:02:53.700 rec room that my kids use for couch gaming so I was woken up early on more 00:02:50.879 --> 00:02:59.280 than one Saturday because the TV won't turn on which seems to be some kind of 00:02:56.459 --> 00:03:02.400 display wake bug in the alpha driver I won't hold that against them though 00:03:01.140 --> 00:03:06.599 not when there are plenty of inconveniences in the public drivers 00:03:04.680 --> 00:03:11.280 that I can hold against them like what is this why do I have to look at this 00:03:09.360 --> 00:03:16.200 limited DisplayPort functionality message every time my PC wakes from 00:03:13.560 --> 00:03:21.599 sleep the worst part is there's no limited functionality it's working fine 00:03:19.980 --> 00:03:27.180 I don't know for sure if it's actually caused by Arc but I've never seen this 00:03:24.659 --> 00:03:30.300 message before so have you received a notification from it that you have 00:03:28.680 --> 00:03:35.040 wanted to see no I can't say that I have yikes yeah I 00:03:33.300 --> 00:03:39.840 ran into things like that a lot system crashes with no Event Viewer logs weird 00:03:37.379 --> 00:03:46.200 graphical issues mostly with Reflections in various games really spiky lag and I 00:03:44.040 --> 00:03:51.599 don't know I saw that in Halo infinite yeah it's in a range of different games 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:53.519 but not all of them which is weird I I 00:03:51.599 --> 00:03:58.200 can't say for sure that any of this was actually caused by Arc but I've never 00:03:56.459 --> 00:04:04.019 really seen anything like it before and full disclosure I already pulled out my 00:04:00.780 --> 00:04:05.459 a770 for the tarkov wipe I tried at the 00:04:04.019 --> 00:04:09.599 beginning of the wipe and it was horrible and okay it was over a month 00:04:07.799 --> 00:04:13.019 and a half so the fact that we're filming this now and it's already out is 00:04:11.040 --> 00:04:18.060 fine all right but I installed at the beginning of the wipe it was terrible 00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:21.299 okay I installed my previous card 00:04:18.060 --> 00:04:23.639 still terrible oh but not quite as 00:04:21.299 --> 00:04:28.380 terrible but that's probably a gap in price and yada yada 00:04:26.160 --> 00:04:32.580 the truth is I actually pulled one already too 00:04:30.540 --> 00:04:36.840 but for good reason I'm the kids couldn't play it takes two on the rec 00:04:34.680 --> 00:04:41.400 room PC because of the blank display issue and it was at like 29 days anyway 00:04:39.419 --> 00:04:45.419 a couple of other lingering issues though with my setup are to do with 00:04:43.020 --> 00:04:52.740 black levels and cable compatibility cable compatibility 00:04:48.600 --> 00:04:55.979 this one is bizarre active cables like 00:04:52.740 --> 00:04:59.699 fiber optic HDMI or DisplayPort cables 00:04:55.979 --> 00:05:03.000 just outright do not seem to work on Arc 00:04:59.699 --> 00:05:05.280 it's fine to run a standard cable into a 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:09.300 Thunderbolt card then run Optical Thunderbolt to a dock then plug a 00:05:07.740 --> 00:05:15.120 standard cable from the dock into the monitor but I couldn't run any long run 00:05:12.900 --> 00:05:19.979 cables like these ones straight out of the back of the a770 to a display 00:05:16.919 --> 00:05:23.340 without getting a garbled image or most 00:05:19.979 --> 00:05:25.860 of the time no image at all it makes no 00:05:23.340 --> 00:05:31.080 sense to me because I would think that a cable with its own built-in signal 00:05:28.080 --> 00:05:32.940 repeater would you know be even less 00:05:31.080 --> 00:05:37.199 susceptible to low signal strength on the video output which is usually the 00:05:34.979 --> 00:05:41.400 issue in these cases but I didn't imagine this Intel seems to have been 00:05:39.600 --> 00:05:46.979 able to reproduce my issue on their end and are apparently working on a fix 00:05:44.280 --> 00:05:52.440 oh ah those run all the insulin speakers that will be a video get subscribed 00:05:49.199 --> 00:05:54.960 don't look look at ltdstore.com where we 00:05:52.440 --> 00:05:58.860 have amazing hoodies like the swacet and Wan hoodie here's another bizarre one 00:05:56.880 --> 00:06:03.419 check out the black levels on this display I messaged them about this a 00:06:00.660 --> 00:06:07.680 while back I think this started when I first connected my projector to the 00:06:05.520 --> 00:06:11.460 secondary output of the card through a Thunderbolt Hub and Optical Thunderbolt 00:06:09.660 --> 00:06:16.500 cable of course but I've since disconnected that and updated my drivers 00:06:14.039 --> 00:06:20.160 and it doesn't seem to have improved now there would be nothing of normal 00:06:18.120 --> 00:06:25.020 about this if I was on an LCD display but this is an OLED 00:06:22.740 --> 00:06:29.520 this is a black background and it is distinctly Gray 00:06:27.180 --> 00:06:35.460 now I think I have a theory actually I have a couple of theories first of all 00:06:31.199 --> 00:06:37.560 watch this when I switch it over to HDR 00:06:35.460 --> 00:06:42.780 the problem goes away it's now black if I plug into my wife's 00:06:40.680 --> 00:06:48.660 computer running an NVIDIA card well it doesn't matter if it's SDR or HDR it 00:06:45.479 --> 00:06:52.080 works fine so I think it's something to 00:06:48.660 --> 00:06:55.800 do with SDR video and the full versus 00:06:52.080 --> 00:06:58.380 limited RGB range values but I don't see 00:06:55.800 --> 00:07:04.380 any obvious way to change that in the arc Control software 00:07:00.840 --> 00:07:07.139 which software okay yeah that is 00:07:04.380 --> 00:07:12.240 definitely another ongoing problem I talked about that plenty in part one or 00:07:09.660 --> 00:07:17.400 1.5 or whatever it was but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop now Intel's 00:07:15.060 --> 00:07:22.319 approach to GPU software literally makes no sense to me at all if you already 00:07:19.979 --> 00:07:28.800 have a desktop GPU controller and you do yeah for the onboard Graphics why do you 00:07:25.740 --> 00:07:30.360 need our control another app and I 00:07:28.800 --> 00:07:35.639 hesitate to even call it that because it's an overlay that also does almost 00:07:33.120 --> 00:07:40.259 nothing even the built-in driver updater doesn't really like work I didn't get 00:07:38.160 --> 00:07:44.160 notifications for new drivers and when I set it to update automatically I did the 00:07:42.360 --> 00:07:49.259 same thing it didn't work I did the same thing I set it to update automatically 00:07:46.139 --> 00:07:51.539 on Sundays at 2 A.M I came back two 00:07:49.259 --> 00:07:55.800 weeks after an updated dropped and there was no update and then when I went to 00:07:53.819 --> 00:07:59.580 manually update I had to click it three times to get it to start doing anything 00:07:57.300 --> 00:08:03.840 and then it had no progress indicator whatsoever so we were actually gaming 00:08:01.800 --> 00:08:08.280 together at the time time Luke and my son are both waiting for me well I'm 00:08:05.940 --> 00:08:13.080 sitting here going look we're about to play CS go I need this driver update 00:08:11.400 --> 00:08:17.099 and I have no idea how long it's gonna take I ended up getting it through the 00:08:14.819 --> 00:08:19.500 Intel driver updater not even art control because it just didn't work 00:08:18.539 --> 00:08:25.080 which frustrating because the driver updates that landed while we were doing the 00:08:23.160 --> 00:08:31.139 challenge were actually really impressive yes Arc gpus ironically 00:08:28.020 --> 00:08:32.339 really struggle in older games and this 00:08:31.139 --> 00:08:38.159 is for a number of reasons architecturally they were designed for 00:08:34.380 --> 00:08:39.959 newer apis dx12 Vulcan in particular and 00:08:38.159 --> 00:08:44.039 on the software side Intel's Arc team hasn't spent the last 20 years coming up 00:08:41.940 --> 00:08:49.860 through those generations of games so there's a lot of holes dx9 in particular 00:08:47.100 --> 00:08:54.959 is not supported in Hardware at all on Arc Alchemist and Intel shifted strategy 00:08:52.560 --> 00:09:00.600 last summer to rely on emulation to support these games which has led to 00:08:56.640 --> 00:09:03.060 some kind of embarrassing results but we 00:09:00.600 --> 00:09:07.440 got to see a lot of that change right before our eyes they pulled off double 00:09:04.980 --> 00:09:11.880 almost triple digit performance improvements right smack in the middle 00:09:09.480 --> 00:09:17.459 of the challenge taking some key problem games from embarrassing to acceptable 00:09:15.360 --> 00:09:22.200 pretty much overnight and the way that they did it is really cool DX VK was 00:09:20.459 --> 00:09:28.620 originally developed for porting native Windows games to Linux it is not 00:09:25.260 --> 00:09:31.200 emulation but rather a translation layer 00:09:28.620 --> 00:09:35.820 that takes DirectX API calls and converts them to an equivalent Vulcan 00:09:33.420 --> 00:09:39.360 API call it's a key component of the proton compatibility tool that powers 00:09:37.560 --> 00:09:43.560 the valve steam deck and the thing is while it was designed for Linux nothing 00:09:41.640 --> 00:09:46.920 prevents you from using it on say Windows I mean the first proof of 00:09:45.120 --> 00:09:51.660 concept that I saw on this was done manually by an end user the difference 00:09:49.500 --> 00:09:55.740 is that Now Intel is taking that and baking it right into their drivers but 00:09:54.120 --> 00:10:01.200 that isn't to say that they're suddenly perfect here's some footage of a CS go 00:09:58.500 --> 00:10:05.540 gaming session with Luke running on the dxvk driver see I wasn't lying these are 00:10:04.500 --> 00:10:10.560 bad and that's one of the games that was 00:10:08.160 --> 00:10:16.019 specifically called out as improved by Intel yeah and this is another yikes 00:10:13.440 --> 00:10:19.320 aside from performance stutters I also got a completely black screen when I was 00:10:17.700 --> 00:10:22.560 trying to access the menu which is why I couldn't change teams for a while there 00:10:20.760 --> 00:10:25.620 I wouldn't describe these dips and performance as constant and when they 00:10:24.360 --> 00:10:30.360 weren't happening it was performing really well but they were definitely 00:10:28.080 --> 00:10:33.959 regular the weird thing is I just thought he was bad because mine was 00:10:31.680 --> 00:10:40.320 running fine the frustrating thing about its failings is that when Arc does well 00:10:36.620 --> 00:10:42.180 it does really well I was sure when we 00:10:40.320 --> 00:10:45.360 fired up Star Citizen it just wasn't gonna work we're gonna be watching a 00:10:43.740 --> 00:10:50.700 slide I thought it was going to be an absolute crap show terrible right but it 00:10:48.000 --> 00:10:54.779 was actually fine it was just a less powerful GPU than what I had before but 00:10:52.680 --> 00:10:59.519 it was no problem at least no more of a problem than anything is in Star Citizen 00:10:57.180 --> 00:11:05.180 fair enough and I saw the same in Halo infinite aside from just being less 00:11:01.440 --> 00:11:08.100 powerful than my 3090 it was fine 00:11:05.180 --> 00:11:12.300 once I adjusted my expectations right and turned off Reflections yeah I'm not 00:11:10.200 --> 00:11:16.140 sure it's Reflections specifically but I had some pretty bad problems I can only 00:11:14.100 --> 00:11:19.440 really describe it as purple lights I had no idea what you were talking about 00:11:17.399 --> 00:11:24.660 until finally I saw it at the end of the Star Citizen session okay yeah that's 00:11:22.440 --> 00:11:30.540 actually helpful it's it's really weird turning Reflections down or even off in 00:11:27.959 --> 00:11:34.260 some situations can tend to resolve them pretty much across the board but I 00:11:32.579 --> 00:11:38.880 basically just did that and then completely forgot about it because some 00:11:36.360 --> 00:11:42.180 level of reflection would still work it was kind of a wake-up call actually for 00:11:40.440 --> 00:11:48.060 me doing this challenge like when we review a new GPU we are so laser focused 00:11:45.600 --> 00:11:52.860 on new rendering features like Ray tracing or who provides the utmost in 00:11:51.000 --> 00:11:57.180 image quality with all the details cranked or whatever who has three 00:11:54.600 --> 00:12:02.579 percent more FPS but in the real world when I'm sitting in a dark room hanging 00:11:59.700 --> 00:12:07.560 out with the boys clicking heads those little details don't matter all I really 00:12:05.399 --> 00:12:12.060 care about is is the frame delivery smooth enough which is probably why Arc 00:12:10.800 --> 00:12:16.440 is ending up with these four star reviews I mean obsessive enthusiasts are 00:12:14.820 --> 00:12:20.279 going to compare and contrast with the best that NVIDIA and AMD have to offer 00:12:18.060 --> 00:12:24.480 and they're gonna find it sorely lacking yeah not really gonna work out there but 00:12:22.380 --> 00:12:29.640 I mean think about it it wasn't that long ago for me that turning off that 00:12:27.360 --> 00:12:33.000 setting that just like doesn't work was just a fact of life and I didn't worry 00:12:31.980 --> 00:12:36.480 about it what's the difference here well the 00:12:35.040 --> 00:12:40.200 difference is that we're talking about spending your own hard-earned money 00:12:38.220 --> 00:12:44.040 versus using whatever your parents have to bring home from Best Buy this is a 00:12:41.579 --> 00:12:47.820 product that you chose true and there are experiential problems that need to 00:12:45.600 --> 00:12:53.519 be addressed aside from like oh I can't enable Hair Works oh no extraneous Bulls 00:12:51.120 --> 00:12:58.500 some of it's small like slow driver download speeds but some of it is big 00:12:55.680 --> 00:13:02.040 like that art control center is a giant steaming pile of okay I have to tell you 00:13:01.260 --> 00:13:08.040 though self-centered Intel refuses to provide 00:13:05.639 --> 00:13:13.800 an exact timeline or any other details but they heard you and everyone they 00:13:10.500 --> 00:13:16.459 know the overlay sucks yes it's going 00:13:13.800 --> 00:13:22.620 away good we're getting a non-overlay single app that will have everything 00:13:19.320 --> 00:13:24.959 Consolidated into one pain it should 00:13:22.620 --> 00:13:29.040 have never even existed I know I know but you got to give them credit where 00:13:26.279 --> 00:13:33.420 it's due okay yeah and like the OBS recording issue that I ran into when I 00:13:30.779 --> 00:13:37.500 was testing av1 encoding shouldn't probably have really existed have been a 00:13:34.980 --> 00:13:43.320 problem either it was super cool yes 20 of the time it worked and yes like 00:13:40.680 --> 00:13:46.500 immediately after it was updated and fixed and that wasn't even an Intel 00:13:44.760 --> 00:13:50.220 issue in the first place that was an OBS issue which is kind of what I'm talking 00:13:48.540 --> 00:13:56.100 about whether it's working with Partners or listening to community feedback 00:13:52.500 --> 00:13:58.139 they're kind of on it and as critical as 00:13:56.100 --> 00:14:03.480 this Series has been I mean even most of this video was not exactly positive and 00:14:01.800 --> 00:14:07.380 as much as I'm absolutely still taking my a770 out as soon as this camera stops 00:14:06.180 --> 00:14:12.420 rolling in the last 30 days alone it's gotten 00:14:10.560 --> 00:14:14.880 worlds better which gives me a lot of Hope for the future 00:14:13.620 --> 00:14:19.500 the future where I'm going to tell you about our sponsor thorum thorum has been 00:14:18.060 --> 00:14:24.240 in business for over a decade handcrafting unique bands and rings out 00:14:21.779 --> 00:14:29.339 of rare materials with rings made out of titanium Ironwood meteorite and even 00:14:27.060 --> 00:14:33.120 real dinosaur bone they have a ring for every taste their rings are as unique as 00:14:31.680 --> 00:14:37.560 the person wearing them and they have so many options the Apollo for example is 00:14:35.459 --> 00:14:42.000 made out of rose gold and black tungsten carbide which will never rust and never 00:14:39.779 --> 00:14:45.360 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