I expect some headwind for this, but bear with me. Firstly, great that ARM keeps pushing forward on the graphics front, this does sound promising. Here my crazy (?) question: would a MALI G76 based graphics card for a PC (laptop or desktop) be a. feasible and b. be better/faster than Intel embedded. Like many users, I have gotten frustrated with the crypto-craze induced price explosion for NVIDIA and AMD dedicated graphics, and Intel seems to have thrown in the towel on making anything close to those when it comes to graphics. So, if one can run WIN 10 on ARM chips, would a graphics setup with, let's say, 20 Mali G76 cores, be worthwhile to have? How would it compare to lower-end dedicated graphics from the current duopoly? Any company out there ambitious and daring enough to try?
Just to clarify: I mean a dedicated multicore (20, please) PCIe-connected MALI graphics card in a PC with a grown-up Intel or AMD Ryzen CPU - hence "crazy", but maybe not. I know there will be some sort of ARM-CPU based WIN 10 laptops, but those target the market currently served by Celeron etc.
Arguably MALI might one day be powerful to do interesting things with should ARM choose to take that direction. But comparing MALI to the dedicated graphics units that AMD and NVIDIA have been working with for decades...certainly not in the short term. If it was that easy Intel would have popped out a competitor chip by now.
I'd say it depends on your use case. For desktop usage and multimedia, it'd probably be decent, although it would use significantly more power than any iGPU simply due to being a PCIe device.
On the other hand, for 3D and gaming, drivers are key (and far more complex), and ARM would here have to play catch-up with a decade or more of driver development from their competitors. It would not go well.
Have you tried to buy a graphics card recently? I actually like the Ryzen chips, but once you add the (required) dedicated graphics card, it gets expensive fast. There is a place for a good, cheap graphics solution that still beats Intel embedded but doesn't break the bank. Think HTC setups. My comment on Intel having thrown in the towel refers to them now using AMD dedicated graphics fused to their CPUs in recent months; they have clearly abandoned the idea of increasing the performance of their own designs (Iris much?) , and that is bad for the competitive situation in the lower end graphics space.
2200ge 2400ge Intel has far from given up gfx , in fact they are plunging into it with both feet? They are demonstrating their own discrete card and hope for availability sometime in 2019. the amd powered hades is just a stop gap, maybe even a little technology demonstrator if you will. The promise of APU accelerated processing is finally arriving, most especially for AI apps.
Truthfully I don't have a good answer for you. A Mali-G76MP20 works out to 480 ALUs (8*3*20), which isn't a lot by PC standards. However ALUs alone aren't everything, as we can clearly see comparing NVIDIA to AMD, AMD to Intel, etc.
At a high level, high core count Malis are meant to offer laptop-class performance. So I'd expect them to be performance competitive with an Intel GT2 configuration, if not ahead of them in some cases. (Note that Mali is only for iGPUs as part of an SoC; it's lacking a bunch of important bits necessary to be used discretely)
At least if Arm gets their way, then perhaps one day we'll get to see this. With Windows-on-ARM, there's no reason you couldn't eventually build an A76+G76 SoC for a Windows machine.
Thanks Ryan! I wouldn't expect MALI graphics in a PC to challenge the high end of dedicated graphics, but if they come close to an NVIDIA 1030 card but significantly cheaper, I would be game to try. That being said, I realize that going from an SOC to a actual stand-alone part would require some heavy lifting. But then, there is an untapped market waiting to be served. Lastly, this must have occurred to the people at ARM graphics (MALI team) , and I wonder if any of them has ever speculated on how their newest&hottest would stack up against GT2, or entry-level NVIDIA and AMD solutions. Any off-the-record remarks?
How 'significantly cheaper' would you expect such a card to be compared to a $70 discrete GPU?
Based on the expected GFXBench score and further extrapolation, the G76MP20 could perform about the same as the 1030, and it's possible that it could work with slower RAM and save there, but still, I don't see how it could be a really successful or high margin product. There would be need for a complete product line reaching significantly higher performance to make this more than a curiosity.
I would really appreciate if you could provide a link to a vendor's site that lists a 1030 card for $ 70. The cheapest I have seen them was for ~ $ 120. If I can get one for $ 70 - we have a deal, even if it is the even further throttled DDR4 version. $ 70 is about what that card is really worth.
Unrelated to this: My question arose from a situation I believe a number of us have: a HTPC that's otherwise Ok (in my case, around a Haswell i5), but cannot for the life of it decode 2160p HEVC at 30 fps or faster. If nothing else, a 1030 class card does at least have HDMI 2.0 out. For a new build, I would probably give the Ryzen 2400G a spin.
I think I can post again. Spam filter blocked me yesterday from posting anything at all. I'll try the part without dollar signs first.
If you just want video, why would you need a GeForce 1030 level GPU? Video is a different ARM IP anyway, not part of the G76.
I do see a small market for a very low power USB GPU that's simply a mobile CPU with some low power RAM. All that basically needs is drivers, and preferably BIOS support. That would allow for example creating Ryzen based PCs without having to stick a GPU in the case, and would work for people like you with old hardware who want support for newer standards, including for laptop owners who want video out and for whom a GPU upgrade is impractical.
I indeed see that the 1030 has gone up in price. I can find it for $ 90 at Amazon and Newegg, so it's not as bad as you say, and there's a DDR4 version for $ 77, which may be okay if what you're looking for is video playback and not 3D performance. However, I don't think a G76 part would solve the GPU market prices problem. If it's good enough, its price will go up like the rest of them. If it's not, its market share will be rather small. I think (as I posted in the other part) that a low power USB card would have a larger market. It would be a more convenient add-on, which could be applied to more configurations.
Oh come on you think they should assume the next snapdragon is not improved to be seen as impartial?
They point out that the projection is that this MALI will be 15% faster than the current snapdragon. But it comes out next year and this will have to compete with the next snapdragon, not the 845. Totally sane to point out that given their history it seems a stretch to same that Qualcomm will only improve their new high end SOC by 15% or less...
" the size of a wavefront is typically a defining feature of an architecture. For long-lived architectures, especially in the PC space, wavefront sizes haven’t changed for years.."
That's self-contradictory, if something stays the same across years of different μarch, it's by definition NOT a defining feature.
I remember how bad the S8s Exynos GPU was, plus older Kirin SoCs power guzzlers. If it was delivering performance that would be still okay but in this age of slim era glass backed phones Multicore configurations will end up throttling. Still a progress is welcomed.
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eastcoast_pete - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link
I expect some headwind for this, but bear with me. Firstly, great that ARM keeps pushing forward on the graphics front, this does sound promising. Here my crazy (?) question: would a MALI G76 based graphics card for a PC (laptop or desktop) be a. feasible and b. be better/faster than Intel embedded. Like many users, I have gotten frustrated with the crypto-craze induced price explosion for NVIDIA and AMD dedicated graphics, and Intel seems to have thrown in the towel on making anything close to those when it comes to graphics. So, if one can run WIN 10 on ARM chips, would a graphics setup with, let's say, 20 Mali G76 cores, be worthwhile to have? How would it compare to lower-end dedicated graphics from the current duopoly? Any company out there ambitious and daring enough to try?eastcoast_pete - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link
Just to clarify: I mean a dedicated multicore (20, please) PCIe-connected MALI graphics card in a PC with a grown-up Intel or AMD Ryzen CPU - hence "crazy", but maybe not. I know there will be some sort of ARM-CPU based WIN 10 laptops, but those target the market currently served by Celeron etc.Alurian - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link
Arguably MALI might one day be powerful to do interesting things with should ARM choose to take that direction. But comparing MALI to the dedicated graphics units that AMD and NVIDIA have been working with for decades...certainly not in the short term. If it was that easy Intel would have popped out a competitor chip by now.Valantar - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link
I'd say it depends on your use case. For desktop usage and multimedia, it'd probably be decent, although it would use significantly more power than any iGPU simply due to being a PCIe device.On the other hand, for 3D and gaming, drivers are key (and far more complex), and ARM would here have to play catch-up with a decade or more of driver development from their competitors. It would not go well.
duploxxx - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link
like many users, I have gotton frustrated with and intel seems to have thrown in the towel....how does that sound you think?..........
easy solution buy a ryzen apu. more then enough cpu power to run win10 and decent gpu and if you think the intel cpu are better then ******
eastcoast_pete - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link
Have you tried to buy a graphics card recently? I actually like the Ryzen chips, but once you add the (required) dedicated graphics card, it gets expensive fast. There is a place for a good, cheap graphics solution that still beats Intel embedded but doesn't break the bank. Think HTC setups. My comment on Intel having thrown in the towel refers to them now using AMD dedicated graphics fused to their CPUs in recent months; they have clearly abandoned the idea of increasing the performance of their own designs (Iris much?) , and that is bad for the competitive situation in the lower end graphics space.jimjamjamie - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link
Ryzen 3 2200GRyzen 5 2400G
Thank me later.
dromoxen - Sunday, June 3, 2018 - link
2200ge2400ge
Intel has far from given up gfx , in fact they are plunging into it with both feet? They are demonstrating their own discrete card and hope for availability sometime in 2019. the amd powered hades is just a stop gap, maybe even a little technology demonstrator if you will. The promise of APU accelerated processing is finally arriving, most especially for AI apps.
Ryan Smith - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link
Truthfully I don't have a good answer for you. A Mali-G76MP20 works out to 480 ALUs (8*3*20), which isn't a lot by PC standards. However ALUs alone aren't everything, as we can clearly see comparing NVIDIA to AMD, AMD to Intel, etc.At a high level, high core count Malis are meant to offer laptop-class performance. So I'd expect them to be performance competitive with an Intel GT2 configuration, if not ahead of them in some cases. (Note that Mali is only for iGPUs as part of an SoC; it's lacking a bunch of important bits necessary to be used discretely)
At least if Arm gets their way, then perhaps one day we'll get to see this. With Windows-on-ARM, there's no reason you couldn't eventually build an A76+G76 SoC for a Windows machine.
eastcoast_pete - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link
Thanks Ryan! I wouldn't expect MALI graphics in a PC to challenge the high end of dedicated graphics, but if they come close to an NVIDIA 1030 card but significantly cheaper, I would be game to try. That being said, I realize that going from an SOC to a actual stand-alone part would require some heavy lifting. But then, there is an untapped market waiting to be served. Lastly, this must have occurred to the people at ARM graphics (MALI team) , and I wonder if any of them has ever speculated on how their newest&hottest would stack up against GT2, or entry-level NVIDIA and AMD solutions. Any off-the-record remarks?ET - Monday, June 4, 2018 - link
How 'significantly cheaper' would you expect such a card to be compared to a $70 discrete GPU?Based on the expected GFXBench score and further extrapolation, the G76MP20 could perform about the same as the 1030, and it's possible that it could work with slower RAM and save there, but still, I don't see how it could be a really successful or high margin product. There would be need for a complete product line reaching significantly higher performance to make this more than a curiosity.
eastcoast_pete - Monday, June 4, 2018 - link
I would really appreciate if you could provide a link to a vendor's site that lists a 1030 card for $ 70. The cheapest I have seen them was for ~ $ 120. If I can get one for $ 70 - we have a deal, even if it is the even further throttled DDR4 version. $ 70 is about what that card is really worth.Unrelated to this: My question arose from a situation I believe a number of us have: a HTPC that's otherwise Ok (in my case, around a Haswell i5), but cannot for the life of it decode 2160p HEVC at 30 fps or faster. If nothing else, a 1030 class card does at least have HDMI 2.0 out. For a new build, I would probably give the Ryzen 2400G a spin.
ET - Wednesday, June 6, 2018 - link
I think I can post again. Spam filter blocked me yesterday from posting anything at all. I'll try the part without dollar signs first.If you just want video, why would you need a GeForce 1030 level GPU? Video is a different ARM IP anyway, not part of the G76.
I do see a small market for a very low power USB GPU that's simply a mobile CPU with some low power RAM. All that basically needs is drivers, and preferably BIOS support. That would allow for example creating Ryzen based PCs without having to stick a GPU in the case, and would work for people like you with old hardware who want support for newer standards, including for laptop owners who want video out and for whom a GPU upgrade is impractical.
ET - Wednesday, June 6, 2018 - link
Okay, now for the tricky part.I indeed see that the 1030 has gone up in price. I can find it for $ 90 at Amazon and Newegg, so it's not as bad as you say, and there's a DDR4 version for $ 77, which may be okay if what you're looking for is video playback and not 3D performance. However, I don't think a G76 part would solve the GPU market prices problem. If it's good enough, its price will go up like the rest of them. If it's not, its market share will be rather small. I think (as I posted in the other part) that a low power USB card would have a larger market. It would be a more convenient add-on, which could be applied to more configurations.
darkich - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link
16.9fps/W vs 11.9fps/W (Snapdragon 845), and you "don't think it will catch up with the competition".vladx - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link
Indeed the author/s seem quite biased.Andrei Frumusanu - Saturday, June 2, 2018 - link
There's a process node difference between that comparison. An eventual Snapdragon 855 will surpass it.vladx - Saturday, June 2, 2018 - link
Jumping to such conclusions doesn't sit well with being an impartial party.jospoortvliet - Monday, June 4, 2018 - link
Oh come on you think they should assume the next snapdragon is not improved to be seen as impartial?They point out that the projection is that this MALI will be 15% faster than the current snapdragon. But it comes out next year and this will have to compete with the next snapdragon, not the 845. Totally sane to point out that given their history it seems a stretch to same that Qualcomm will only improve their new high end SOC by 15% or less...
jospoortvliet - Monday, June 4, 2018 - link
Same -> assumelevizx - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link
" the size of a wavefront is typically a defining feature of an architecture. For long-lived architectures, especially in the PC space, wavefront sizes haven’t changed for years.."That's self-contradictory, if something stays the same across years of different μarch, it's by definition NOT a defining feature.
levizx - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link
"Arm is touting a 2.7x increase in machine learning performance"No they are not. They are claiming 2.7x the performance, 1.7x increase.
Quantumz0d - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link
I remember how bad the S8s Exynos GPU was, plus older Kirin SoCs power guzzlers. If it was delivering performance that would be still okay but in this age of slim era glass backed phones Multicore configurations will end up throttling. Still a progress is welcomed.newblar - Monday, June 4, 2018 - link
I always wondered why ARM didn't just buy imagination technologies on the cheap so they could get their GPU tech.digitalwhatsup - Tuesday, June 5, 2018 - link
Wow . Lot of information at one place. Love to see details on storage system. Thanks https://www.digitalwhatsup.com/