Intel Highlights Their Progress On Arc Graphics Drivers Since Launch

[Danny3]

Have they contributed anything to DXVK?
Does their GPU support SR-IOV?

[Barley9432]

Oh look, we became 43% faster in D3D9 (by utilizing the open source project DXVK). Bugger off, Intel.

This is incorrect, actually do your research and run the game. Intel made a native DirectX 9 driver for Arc on Windows and only use DXVK in selected games. I tested CSGO for example (the game they keep praising), it uses the native DirectX 9 driver.

[Barley9432]

Have they contributed anything to DXVK?

Yes they have, this one for example has been stuck in review since September: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/pull/2967

There's other pulls from Intel devs I believe that have been merged

[Radtraveller]

I am curious about this, virtualization turned on or off should not prevent the card from posting in any way. Windows requires virtualization to be enabled in certain cases (ex. WSL2) so this would be a massive issue for Intel Arc if it was the case.

A quick cursory search also reveals that these GPU's can be passed through to a VM (with some work): https://www.reddit.com/r/unRAID/comm...through_to_vm/

This would indicate that they work just fine with virtualization enabled. It sounds like it may be a motherboard bios issue or such.

All this said... I have no actual experience with the Intel ARC, but I am looking at possibly getting one to be my systems host GPU so the rest of the GPUs can be passed around to VMs.

Just going by what the intel representative said and personal experience attempting to add an ARC 770 to my dell precision 7920.
(which I use for hosting alot of virtual machines for test lab)

I did send a follow up email to him stating I wasn’t trying to use the arc inside the vms/passthrough

..but I couldn’t get to that point anyway since the workstation refused to even POST with the card installed while virtual extensions enabled in bios..
the only thing he told me was that all virtualization support MUST be disabled on bios.

no reply from Dell at all to emails about this.
Latest bios didn’t change anything either.

Disabling virtual extensions in bios is NOT happening.

If someone got an ARC to work with virtualization enabled in bios, then they are better than the intel rep..

[zexelon]

Just going by what the intel representative said and personal experience attempting to add an ARC 770 to my dell precision 7920.
(which I use for hosting alot of virtual machines for test lab)

I did send a follow up email to him stating I wasn’t trying to use the arc inside the vms/passthrough

..but I couldn’t get to that point anyway since the workstation refused to even POST with the card installed while virtual extensions enabled in bios..
the only thing he told me was that all virtualization support MUST be disabled on bios.

no reply from Dell at all to emails about this.
Latest bios didn’t change anything either.

Disabling virtual extensions in bios is NOT happening.

If someone got an ARC to work with virtualization enabled in bios, then they are better than the intel rep..

Oh man, yah, I did read the "Intel Rep" comment, and it was 100% an "I am going to regurgitate the lowest common denominator answer to make this problem go away for me" type of answer.

That being said I would hazard to say the problem is 85% likely to be with the Dell system and their bios. I did run into issues like this back in the day with enabling virtualization on some early i7 ASUS motherboards and they had specifically gimped the vt-x/vt-d implementation and refused to fix the issue "because they didn't support that use case".

[ryao]

The deal breaker is that you cannot even get a box (pc, server, workstation) to even post with an ARC if any virtualization is enabled in the bios:
I just gave up on it after the following response from intel: (couldn’t even post.. why would OS even matter?)


Hugo_Intel (Moderator) posted a new reply in Intel® ARC™ Graphics on 01-13-2023 01:40 PM:

Hello radtraveller

Thank you for contacting Intel® ARC™ Graphics Communities. I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing issues with your Intel® Arc™ A770 Graphics.
Please note that virtualization is not supported on the Intel® Arc™ A770, more information is in this article. Also, the only Linux distribution that has been validated by Intel so far is Ubuntu 22.04.

In order to troubleshoot this issue, please disable virtualization in your system and if possible try Ubuntu 22.04 to check if the issue persists.

Best Regards,
Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

There are different kinds of virtualization. The one that is mentioned in the article that Intel’s technician linked is GPU virtualization via PCI-E SR-IOV. The graphics card should not care about whether CPU virtualization extensions are enabled. The only issue you might have with it is if you were to try to pass the graphics card to a VM via VFIO.

That said, are you seriously unable to get a machine to post unless you disable VT-x? This sounds like a BIOS compatibility issue.

[ryao]

This is incorrect, actually do your research and run the game. Intel made a native DirectX 9 driver for Arc on Windows and only use DXVK in selected games. I tested CSGO for example (the game they keep praising), it uses the native DirectX 9 driver.

How can you tell?

Also, they really should implement vulkan graphics pipeline library support to their driver so that they can use DXVK without stutter for all D3D9 games. I assume that the stutter issues are solved by GPL support like they are on Nvidia graphics and that if Mesa does not have it, their windows driver does not have it either.

[Barley9432]

[QUOTE=ryao;n1370569]

How can you tell?


You can see the API the game is using with MSI Afterburner and compare with and without DXVK's dls. Intel also talked about it on their Q&A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omUTYlm2Al0

They're working on vulkan pipeline support, seems close to being merged: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/...8#note_1748276

[Radtraveller]

There are different kinds of virtualization. The one that is mentioned in the article that Intel’s technician linked is GPU virtualization via PCI-E SR-IOV. The graphics card should not care about whether CPU virtualization extensions are enabled. The only issue you might have with it is if you were to try to pass the graphics card to a VM via VFIO.

That said, are you seriously unable to get a machine to post unless you disable VT-x? This sounds like a BIOS compatibility issue.

Seriously unable to get the dell to post with the ARC 770 in the machine.
card in, no post, card out, works normally.

I didn’t turn off the virtualization to “test” because there is absolutely no point in me doing so for this machine.
This is my workstation with many vms.

It wouldn’t matter to me if disabling virtual extensions “fixed” the issue or not, I cannot use it in a machine where I need the virtualization extensions enabled.
I cannot use it on this workstation.

Maybe someday I’ll build another workstation or a “gaming” machine for a niece or nephew and throw it in there.
But between Intel and Dell, this card does me no good. (Sorry, didn’t mean to hijack the thread, I have no comment on software or drivers since I am unable to use the card… at all in my workstation)

[qarium]

this card does me no good. (Sorry, didn’t mean to hijack the thread, I have no comment on software or drivers since I am unable to use the card… at all in my workstation)

this card does you no good... i don't know any person who could say the opposit if he is truthfuill

on fedora 37 the intel arc a380 runs in software rendering at 1024x800 pixel and fedora 38 is still 3-4 months away.

people told me to update to the unstable/development version of fedora but for a non geek/nerd computer like the computer of my mother i see this advice as harmfull.

of course my situation is much better than your situation because my mother can use this computer with software rendering
and you can not use the computer at all.

its a real sad status.

all the people talked in favor of intel that we need 3. gpu manufacturer and intel will be awesome...

right now we have mainly 3 players

one is a premium but harmfull player thats nvidia

then we have the performance per dollar king AMD

and we have the budget low-price cheap underdog intel

what if AMD would have added AV1 decode/encode and PCIe 8x to the radeon 6400/6500 then i would have been better with amd..

so the intel arx 380 sale was mainly because of the AV1 decode.