Intel Clarifies HECI Usage For Arc Graphics' GSC

[photom]

I really want to get one of the ARC gpu's.

if you want to use Linux with that ARC hardware, welcome to our little testing booth - it will get better, sooner or later - Win10 driver is already working great after so many bad tests/reviews at launch date.

I'm more happy with my Intel GPU (A380) as I ever was using my Geforce (1060) or my AMD APU (5700G) - neither of those worked 100% when going into detail - but I think positive

[BrokenAnsible]

if you want to use Linux with that ARC hardware, welcome to our little testing booth - it will get better, sooner or later - Win10 driver is already working great after so many bad tests/reviews at launch date.

I'm more happy with my Intel GPU (A380) as I ever was using my Geforce (1060) or my AMD APU (5700G) - neither of those worked 100% when going into detail - but I think positive

I purchased an ARC a750 limited edition mostly because I eventually want the AV1 encoding support. It will be delivered Monday. I have not put the rig together yet so this is all going to be a huge test for me.

Hardware
----------

AMD Ryzen 5700X
Gigabyte X570S AORUS Master
32GB Patriot Viper Steel
WD Black 1TB SN770 - Windows 10 VM passthrough
Crucial P2 500GB SSE - POP!_OS 22.04
GPU 1 - Intel Arc a750 - Host Card
GPU 2 - MSI Geforce GTX 1080 - Windows 10 VM passthrough

I am hoping I can have the Intel card running in Linux. I prefer POP!_OS but I'll have to evaluate if the non-signed kernel will work with the setup I want. That is to have a VM with Windows 10 passed through with the pci-e 4 WD ssd, GTX 1080 and some usb 3 ports so that I can take advantage of some windows only gaming and development tasks. The host OS and host usb 3 will take in video from an EVGA XR1 from the GTX 1080 for capture bringing it into OBS running on the Host OS. I want to record gameplay in AV1 and eventually stream it.

This is going to be one heck of an experiment over the holidays! Let's hope that we can update POP!_OS to kernel 6 and mesa git and still support all the VM features I need. Otherwise I may have to passthrough intel gpu to windows 10 until kernel 6 based distros ship.

[photom]

I purchased an ARC a750 limited edition mostly because I eventually want the AV1 encoding support.
...
I am hoping I can have the Intel card running in Linux.

when we're talking about today (or next week), regarding AV1/ Intel IP/ASIC - if you want to enjoy all the intel features regarding AV1, use windows beta driver and qsvencc
if you are ok with less features, use linux, i915 backport driver and self compiled qsvencc or ffmpeg - this way you can make AV1 CQP/CBR/VBR work, but not with all options... wait for ICQ

realistically I would say wait for:
- next Windows 10 (perhaps also beta) driver and use Win10 trial until linux catches up (could be 99% feature complete and mostly bugfixing/optimizations coming)
- next linux i915 backport driver and the complete intel stack
....or... if you have much time - waiting for 6.0/6.1 kernel (my guess would be 6.2) to be feature complete and usable for more than a verify command, using media/compute...

atm. there is so much happening in intel drivers, software stack, ffmpeg and qsvencc atm. - it's coming, all people are working very hard, paid or for free

[BrokenAnsible]

when we're talking about today (or next week), regarding AV1/ Intel IP/ASIC - if you want to enjoy all the intel features regarding AV1, use windows beta driver and qsvencc
if you are ok with less features, use linux, i915 backport driver and self compiled qsvencc or ffmpeg - this way you can make AV1 CQP/CBR/VBR work, but not with all options... wait for ICQ

realistically I would say wait for:
- next Windows 10 (perhaps also beta) driver and use Win10 trial until linux catches up (could be 99% feature complete and mostly bugfixing/optimizations coming)
- next linux i915 backport driver and the complete intel stack
....or... if you have much time - waiting for 6.0/6.1 kernel (my guess would be 6.2) to be feature complete and usable for more than a verify command, using media/compute...

atm. there is so much happening in intel drivers, software stack, ffmpeg and qsvencc atm. - it's coming, all people are working very hard, paid or for free

Waiting for Kernel 6.2 is probably the safest bet, but unfortunately I feel like I am always in this constantly wait mode with Linux Kernels and my hardware. I might adopt the position to use the Nvidia card in linux and the Intel card in Win10 VM for now.

[photom]

I might adopt the position to use the Nvidia card in linux and the Intel card in Win10 VM for now.

the Nvidia 1080 is solid for linux gaming - as is the Intel ARC right now (OpenGL and most Vulkan/DX stuff) | but talking about AV1, there really is not a technology deep dive for Nvidia (40) yet, NVENC changes got added to ffmpeg upstream and no sane person can be testing a 2000-2500 eur (in Europe incl. taxes) card atm just for the sake of comparing features... and video/streaming quality

[BrokenAnsible]

the Nvidia 1080 is solid for linux gaming - as is the Intel ARC right now (OpenGL and most Vulkan/DX stuff) | but talking about AV1, there really is not a technology deep dive for Nvidia (40) yet, NVENC changes got added to ffmpeg upstream and no sane person can be testing a 2000-2500 eur (in Europe incl. taxes) card atm just for the sake of comparing features... and video/streaming quality

Yeah the 1080 is still as good as a 3060 / 6600 if we're just talking 1080/1440p gaming. It starts to break down against the 3060 if you like to twitch stream with 1 rig because of the NVENC update really puts in some work. But pure gaming, yeah the 1080 has not let me down. The 1080 is probably still competitive in the same way with 1080p against the ARC a750 if you just game and don't care about content creation.

I have a dream of being able to either pass in my Win10 VM gaming instance or a PS5/Xbox Series X into the Linux instance and stream or encode AV1 using non-CPU encoding. I know the steaming AV-1 has a long way to go but I was hoping things would be stable for non-streaming AV1 recording on the Intel card on Linux. EposVox may have overhyped the Arc for the short term. I am certain in the long term this card is going to be a great content creation card.