Intel Arc multi-GPU rumor sparks excitement, before its shot down in flames

Date:
Fri, 12 Aug 2022 16:03:05 +0000

Description:
Its been a bleak past couple of months for Arc Alchemist, and that theme
looks set to continue, sadly.

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Intels Arc graphics cards have been seriously disappointing since they spluttered onto the desktop with a China-only launch, too but theres just been a brief flurry of excitement around a rumor that Team Blue might have an ace up its sleeve. Sadly, though, it wasnt to be.

The ace in question was multi-GPU support, meaning that multiple graphics cards could be installed in the same PC and work together to juice up performance levels in games which if Intel could get it right, would be a major advantage against AMD and Nvidia. (Team Reds CrossFire is dead, and so is Team Greens SLI effectively, though its still kicking about at the top-end in a fashion).

Word that Intel was planning such a multi-GPU innovation which should have been shown off at SIGGRAPH 2022, but didnt quite make the cut came from TweakTown , but the tech site subsequently reported that after it broke the story, Intel got in touch to clarify that multiple card support was only happening in a very limited way.

Intel told TweakTown: Intel showed a Blender Cycles rendering demo at
SIGGRAPH with Intel Arc graphics. Multi-GPU rendering support for Intel Arc and Intel Arc Pro graphics cards through oneAPI is supported starting in Blender 3.3. Intel Arc graphics does not support multi-GPU for gaming.

That effectively shoots down the idea that PC gamers could benefit from accelerated frame rates with more than one Arc GPU in their machine.
Analysis: Okay, so not now but maybe in the future?

We can see why folks jumped on this and were so quick to get excited. The whole desktop Arc launch has seen the discrete GPUs limping out of the gate, and bad news about drivers and stability has been compounded by further worries regarding whether the whole project is set to be canceled . The
latter is something Intel has strenuously denied, mind you.

At any rate, were all pretty disappointed with the state of Arc Alchemist right now, so a glimmer of hope of something unexpected was inevitably going to be seized upon. Especially as in the early days, Intel did talk about
going the multi-GPU route with gaming, and as we observed at the time, this seemed like it might be a viable way for Team Blue to meaningfully differentiate its desktop graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia.

Of course, just because it isnt happening with Alchemist doesnt mean that Intel wont look at a gaming implementation in a future generation of GPUs. If we get that far, but of course the worry is that with the driver side of the equation already being seriously problematic for Intel, complicating things further with a multiple card implementation a notoriously tricky business as gamers already know from past experience with SLI and the like doesnt seem like a sensible idea.



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/intel-arc-multi-gpu-rumor-sparks-excitement-bef ore-its-shot-down-in-flames/


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