Comment by lelanthran | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lelanthran | Hacker News Reader

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> Intel GPUs are pretty worthless right now for inference, let alone training.

Why? Is it hardware limitations or deficient software stack?

In any case, as nvidia is ignoring the gaming market, AMD and Intel both have a vacuum to fill, but I don't see them doing it.

Intel, especially, should have rushed out gaming cards as soon as nvidia shortages were predictable (2023, at least).

The problem I have is not that an old GPU can't be used for gaming (it can), it's that I am forced to upgrade from a perfectly working 660ti that once played far cry 3, 4 and 5 (and every other game I threw at it) because my kernel doesn't have support anymore (older drivers don't work on a newer kernel).

A new GPU with the power of a decade-old GPU but all the latest software support would be great. Right now, if I want to see certain web-pages (WebGL), I have to buy a new GPU, but there isn't any low-priced GPUs anymore.

> A new GPU with the power of a decade-old GPU [...]

Asus tried, with GDDR5 versions of the GT710 circa 2021 in a very sensible fanless, "bus-powered", single slot design; alas being an older design did not help much with stability with Nouveau drivers, though on the Windows side it did 10 as well as XP which wasn't a bad deal for spending a week digitizing a bunch of tapes with a good old BT868 capture card!

Bonus point for proper VGA and DVI connectors too, just one weird omission - a half-height card only supplied with a full height bracket?

Define low price, because looking at sold listings on ebay, you can get a used RTX 3070 for around $250, which is as capable as any 10-year old 8 GB card, and certainly more capable than a 660 Ti.

Still not great given that I paid about the same for a new-in-unopened-box RTX 3070 a couple years ago, but price increases no lower-end cards without enough VRAM for AI at least haven't skyrocketed like the top end of the market.

Memory bandwidth is really low on most of the cards - even if you hyper-optimized the software stack, can't get around that. Compute isn't great either.

I think the cards are probably fine for gaming though. I haven't used these cards, just the numbers I've seen floating around are pretty underwhelming.

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