Intel Arc Availability sucks

So, after almost a month after its release they are finally available at the local Memory Express’ here in Canada (the 16GB A770 LE). I am going to grab one on my lunch and maybe start testing on my framework / egpu this weekend to see how it compares to my 12GB 3060.

UPDATE: Got it, now if only work was done…


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Damn, you’re quick!

Is the A770 LE worth the purchase over the 3060?

By the way, did you see the 6750 XT for CAD$400 the other day? That was a good deal.

Well my 3060 is still sold at stores today and it still costs more than I just paid for the A770 which “Spec Wise” is more powerful? But I will have to do a lot of testing this weekend to really know if it’s worth it… going to do some video conversion / upscaling tests and lots of game tests (new and old just to see how bad older games run) and give an opinion if it’s worth it or not.

@Second_Coming, that looks like a good deal! … I paid $479.95 CAD (about $355.95 USD) for the A770 16GB LE plus an additional $47.99 for an over the counter IPR 2 year warranty at my local Memory Express

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Excited to see how well it performs!!! Thanks for being a guinea pig!

I received my Intel A770 LE and an Acer A770 (both 16GB) models, I have yet to test them as the test system I am putting them in doesn’t have the required power supply to get the A770s running. Currently running the A380 inside but I have issues with the ReBar on the system (partly because it is a BIOS mod to enable functionality).

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I somehow always relate that to the AirBus…

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I also haven’t managed to get around to testing the A770 :sweat_smile:

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I tried enabling ReBar in my Intel Z97-Pro motherboard only to realise that ASUS didn’t allow mapping of the GPU to 64-bit memory to maintain the CSM module so it is mapped to 32-bits =\

Now I am contemplating getting another Haswell mainboard (maybe a H97 chipset one) and hope it works or I could get a new AMD mainboard (I have a spare Ryzen 3600 CPU) B450 or B550 or maybe even an MSI A320M-A Pro (seems like MSI enabled ReBar on all their AMD motherboards from 300 series upwards) that definitely works, but that means that I have to buy new DDR4 RAM =\ That’s kinda pricey for a test system to test =\

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So it looks like FW laptop does not currently support ReBAR unless there is some setting in OS that I haven’t set. My understanding is that it is purely a BIOS thing so… @Kieran_Levin what are the chances of getting ReBAR enabled on the next BIOS update?

I actually already submitted a support ticket for ReBAR support and mentioned it HERE, Changes are slim at best :stuck_out_tongue:

Basically, Arc on Framework 11th Gen is unusable, without ReBAR support the performance is about 50% of what it should be (when stuff actually loads) and I get random crashes daily (when docked with Arc) even if I am not using my laptop for anything (I even swapped the Arc with another one just in case the crashing was a hardware issue).

I am forced to put my old GPU back in and very disappointed / frustrated… then again this is exactly what I was willing (worst case) to do for being a “Guinea Pig”

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It is not even stable on Desktop too, I used an old system to run games and stuff just because I wanted to test it without screwing my main rig.

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I believe it! I hope Intel is working on the drivers!

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Yea, I got it because of how well the iGPUs were supported on Linux for generations, at the same time supporting the underdog in hopes of more competition.

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My patience will be rewarded, I assume after this I will actually be able to use the GPU I paid for in an eGPU box…maybe

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They just removed the experimental flag, meaning we don’t need to use modprobe and now probably has DKMS. The rest is actually the same as 6.0 and 6.1.

Yeah, I don’t really know what that means…

Which is why I said maybe! ReBAR is still absent but if I could just use the bloody thing even with reduced performance that would be an improvement for me.

It just means that the kernel recognises the GPU out of the box without a workaround to probe the device ID of the GPU specifically. Building the Mesa drivers for it on Linux, would be automatic during updating rather than manual of what it is right now.

I would guess now it would boot without installing the drivers manually I think, assuming Framework BIOS works.

It does not. I get display out if I’m in BIOS but the second I boot into Fedora, no picture. It’s recognized using lspci but I can’t otherwise interact with it.

The kernel doesn’t recognise the GPU, thus you need to modprobe the pci device to point it in the right direction during boot. Installing Mesa alone isn’t enough, of course it is complicated by the 32 or 64 bit memory space that the BIOS assigns the GPU to as well as BAR size. Considering the BIOS recognises your GPU, I would think that the BAR size and Abvoe 4G decoding isn’t the issue (at least during my troubleshooting here: GitHub - xCuri0/ReBarUEFI: Resizable BAR for (almost) any UEFI system)

Just wanted to let everyone know about my success!

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