quickstart
10 MAXIMU MPC JUN 2022
© INTEL, AMDIT FEELS AS THOUGH we
have been waiting an age
to see Intel’s discrete
GPUs. Development
started several years
ago, and we’ve been
teased by it ever since.
Expectations are certainly high: Nvidia
and AMD have carved up the graphics
card market between them for decades.
Intel has decided to release the mobile
versions of Arc first, the A-Series Mobile,
which offers a huge jump from the
lackluster OEM discrete cards we’ve seen
previously. At its heart, each Intel GPU
uses Xe cores (replacing the old Execution
Unit). These have 16 256-bit vector
engines and 16 1024-bit matrix engines.
This equates to 128 FP16 operations
per clock. More Xe cores equals more
power. The media decode engine is highly
capable and includes AV1 encoding (the
first time we’ve seen this on a GPU). The
software, Arc Control, looks remarkably
mature too. There are five initial versions,
the A350M, A370M, A550M, A730M, and
the A770M. They have (in order) 6, 8, 16,
24, and 32 Xe cores. Why the names don’t
reflect this is a mystery, but each one also
has the same number of ray tracing units.
The A3s have 4GB, the A5 has 8GB, and
the two A7s carry either 12GB or 16GB
of memory. The memory bus is narrow
(64 to 256-bit), but a decent L3 cache
helps. There was some confusion over
clock speeds, as Intel didn’t clarify
what it was quoting, as it simply states
a Graphics Clock. The numbers were on
the low side too, from 1,150 to 1,650MHz.
It transpires this is a near-meaningless
baseline speed, as actual clock speeds
will be much higher (phew!). Power
consumption ranges from 25W to a fairly
chunky 150W.
The media engine is certainly excellent,
but game performance will be the real
test. The two low-end A3s are available
in laptops now (in Asia first), while the
A550M and beefier A7s will follow this
summer. So, it’s a solid start, on paper
at least. Intel is slowly edging towards
the graphics market, a little too slowly
for our liking, but at least it’s happening.
Once again, we’re left waiting for the main
event, delayed until later this year.–CLThird player
joins the GPU
marketINTEL’S ARC
ALCHEMIST
Win11 still
relatively rare
A survey of 10 million Windows
systems by IT Asset Management
outfit Lansweeper, has revealed
that few have taken Microsoft up
on its free Windows 11 upgrade
offer. It puts the numbers of Win
systems at 1.44 percent, with
Win10 at 80.34 percent. There are
still more people running WinXP,
7, and 8 combined than Win11.
Even data from Steam, where
games systems and modern rigs
are more common, puts Win11 at
just 11.56 percent, with Win10 at
74.69 percent. It may be free, but
with no standout features, Win
isn’t attractive enough to lure
people away from their familiar
Win10 desktop. Is Windows, as
Microsoft once claimed, pretty
much completed as an OS? – CLPC sales
boom over
It was ghastly for many reasons,
but the pandemic led to a lot of
people buying new PCs, creating a
sudden boom in sales after years
of stagnation. It appears that boom
is coming to an end.
A survey from market
research outfit International
Data Corporation shows that the
market has slowed down, with
sales dropping over 5 percent
between January and March. After
two years of double-digit growth,
that’s an abrupt turn. Overall
volumes are still respectable, with
80.5 million PCs shifted in the first
quarter. As supplies increase, we
should see a return to some good
old-fashioned competition too,
which is good news if you’re in the
market for a new rig. –CLAMD’s 6000 series goes Pro
AMD SEEMS DETERMINED not to let a month go by without launching something.
This month, we have a new set of 6000 Pro series laptop processors. These feature
Rembrandt architecture with 6nm Zen 3+ cores, and integrated RDNA 2 promising
“ultimate performance for professionals”. The top chip is the Ryzen 9 Pro 6950 in H
(45W), and HS (35W) flavors. You get eight cores, a 3.3GHz base clock, and a boost
speed of 4.9GHz, with 20MB of L2/L3 cache. Below this is the Ryzen 7 Pro 6850 and
the 12-core Ryzen 5 Pro 6650, then two ‘U’ low power 28W versions: the Ryzen 7 Pro
6850U, and Ryzen 5 Pro 6650U. The Zen 3+ core brings DDR5 memory, Wi-Fi 6E,
USB 4, and Thunderbolt support. There are also three less capable Zen 3 versions to
complete the range. The ‘Pro’ tag means you get hardware security features, long-
term support, and IT management tools that customers with sensitive data want.
As you’d expect, the launch comes with bar charts showing performance hikes,
but AMD claims CPU gains over the previous Pro chips of between 1.1 and 1.3x, and
a jump on the GPU side of between 1.5 and 2.1x as the RDNA 2 engine gets to work.
Comparisons with Intel’s nearest rivals show the usual AMD trick of strong multi-
threaded scores and comparable single-thread ones. Expect laptops from the usual
suspects this summer: Lenovo has ThinkPads and HP ProBooks planned. AMD has
been making progress into a traditional Intel heartland: the high-end business laptop
market. These new Pro chips are a serious attack on that. We know they’re good, as
the regular Ryzen 9 6900HS is a beast. AMD is aiming at Intel’s best customers. –CLAMD has brought its
Zen 3+ cores into
one of Intel’s key
markets, the
high-power
professional laptop.