this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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I’m considering building a new machine soon and was looking at the Intel Arc GPUs as a possibility. Anyone have experience using them in their system? I’m on Arch btw

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[–] mondoman712@lemmy.ml 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have an a770. The only issue that I've had with what little gaming I do, is that CS2 ran pretty terribly, although I tried again last night and it seemed much better.

[–] Kaidao@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Appreciate it. It sounds like with the new announcement they’re putting quite a bit of support behind it so I’m optimistic improvements are made quickly

[–] CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I've been running an A770 Limited Edition on Arch for a year now and I am happy with it now. It was a rough start, with issues ranging from glitches and crashes to HDMI and DisplayPort audio/VRR issues, but these days it is pretty solid. VRR works fine on my DisplayPort 144Hz 4K monitor. Most games perform pretty well but temper your expectations, the A770 is a midrange card.

I can play Overwatch 2 at 4K 144Hz low settings just fine and I don't see many frame dips. It's not noticeable if it does dip because VRR. CS2 performance isn't amazing, but at low settings 4K I get between 100 and 160 frames depending on complexity. I have FSR turned on. On Cyberpunk I have FSR turned on and it seems to dip down to 20fps when out in the desert and the city is in view, but usually 40 to 60.

[–] Kaidao@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for this. I’m on 1440p so hopefully the performance will be a bit better. The A770 seems like it has great price to performance though, making it one of the top spots on my list.

Glad to hear that support is solid on Arch

[–] CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

I upgraded from a 1440p 144Hz screen last month. It works well with 1440p and you won't need to rely on FSR as much as on a 4K 144 screen.

[–] SteveTech@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wasn't able to enable VRR on my monitor (with freesync). I'm using KDE Wayland on Debian Testing, just wondering if you knew a workaround or something?

[–] CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What kernel are you using? Debian tends to lag behind with kernel updates which makes it a bad choice when running new hardware. I switched from Debian to Arch when I got my A770 because at the time Debian's latest kernel even in sid didn't support Arc at all while it worked fine in Arch.

[–] SteveTech@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm running 6.5.10, also with an A770. I could maybe try/compile 6.6 later, but 6.5 seems new enough I thought.

[–] CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hmm, 6.5 should support VRR just fine yeah

[–] SteveTech@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah no change with 6.6, I guess I'll probably open an issue somewhere when I have the time to figure out what's broken.

[–] CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just to make sure, you're using DisplayPort right? I don't think the Arc cards support VRR over HDMI. The HDMI port on the Arc is actually a built in DisplayPort to HDMI converter, and I don't think any converter chips support VRR modes.

[–] SteveTech@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yep, it's definitely using DisplayPort!

[–] SteveTech@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Okay so for whatever reason, turning Freesync on and off a bunch of times from the OSD and then replugging works until the next reboot, so I've dumped the working EDID and I'm trying to figure out how to load it at boot (~~but I'm not having much luck~~).

For reference, the monitor is a Samsung LC24RG50.

Edit: Got the EDID loaded, KDE says it's supported, but VRRTest doesn't really seem to do anything.

Edit 2: Other games work fine.

[–] hellvolution@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Do you know you can add testing, sid, experimental repositories, right? Sid & experimental have super new kernels/versions...

[–] Static_Rocket@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I've noticed occasional regressions in video decode performance between kernel releases but they tend to fix them in the next release.

Otherwise smoother sailing than Nvidia for sure.

[–] SteveTech@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

It was pretty much plug and play for me, I don't really play much but it's worked for any game I've thrown at it (although there was some artifacting in CS2). I've also done some AI stuff with it and haven't had any issues.

[–] cujo@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

Glad I'm not the only one with this question. Feels like it's difficult to find up-to-date information on the performance of these Arc cards on Linux; I'd like to support Intel's move into this space but it's hard without knowing how drastically it's going to affect my gaming performance. 😅

I'm glad to hear the situation seems to be rapidly improving. I may pick up an A770 yet.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

As a general rule for new hardware from Linux friendly companies, you're pretty much in the best possible position already by using a rolling release distribution. It's the same with AMD where reports of bugs from 6 months ago are basically ancient past by now.

[–] aksdb@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago

I would love to upgrade to one, but from tests I gathered that they have an exceedingly bad idle power draw. Given that the card would idle most of the time, I don't really want to waste power on it if nvidia and amd manage to stay far lower.

[–] recursive_recursion@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Does anyone know if the drivers are open source?

I've heard conflicting claims online and I saw that Phoronix states that they are but their article doesn't provide any sources backing up that claim

[–] Quackdoc@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Intel A350, can't say I have many complaints now. a lot of the issues have been ironed out. I'm not sure if the sparse work has landed for i915 yet, but once it does I don't think I will have too many super major issues left. Im getting some artifacts when using gamescope, but that's not a major issue for me since I don't really need gamescope

[–] cujo@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago

UPDATE: I picked up the ARC A750. Been driving it around for awhile. Older DirectX games perform on par or often even better on Linux with ARC than they do on Windows. DX12 games had negligible performance boosts being run on Windows vs. Linux with ARC save some big exceptions...

Certain DX12 titles, one of which I own (Halo Infinite) WILL NOT RUN under Linux WITH the ARC card due to a lack of features in Vulkan. There are still some DX12 calls that have no equivalents in Vulkan, and while some games flag this feature set without using it and MAY be able to be tricked into running without it, any games that actually USE those features will not run under Linux with the ARC card, period. So... Research your newer AAA DX12 titles first.