Intel ARC A770 on Linux: The Ugly Truth

hey gear Seekers I'm Nick I've been talking about doing a video with the Intel Arc gpus in Linux and to see what the story was with running these new Intel gpus in Linux and in summary just to kick off the video it's really really not good but what is not good about it let's chat [Music] I'll start off by saying this video I know is not going to be everybody's cup of tea but there are some really big things that Intel needs to fix with these new arc gpus and the first thing is as simple as installing the drivers now with the Intel Arc gpus you only really have one option to use this GPU in Linux sounds pretty stupid right it's the most open operating system platform and you've only got one option that option is Ubuntu 22.04 what not only that there's no easy way for people who are getting into Linux to do this you really need to be a terminal Warrior to get these drivers installed there's a whole bunch of steps here and I'll just go through these steps and show you what they are just so you can see how Antiquated all of this is now for the seasoned mix and Ubuntu users out there this is not going to be too much of a problem but for anyone else who wants to even just try out Linux with these Intel Arc gpus not to say here that these steps here don't work now I know that installing kernel modules for gpus is a normal thing for most Linux users that's not the problem here my problem is it should just be a single package it just makes it easier now there are packages where you can just get a d package for instance for NVIDIA gpus or AMD gpus that'll just do all the background leg work if you really really want it to now that is not my problem with the Linux support here whatsoever the kernel modules is a more than adequate solution I just wish it was a little bit easier for people out there who aren't as versed in Linux once you get an Intel Arc GPU up and running in Linux and by Linux I mean Ubuntu 22.04 One distribution how is the actual graphical performance well this is incredibly hit and missed at best and I know this video is taking a different turn to the way we usually would do a GPU video but there's not a lot to show because a lot just does not work and this is the case in Windows a lot of the time as well so what I decided to do was do our usual thing run our regular Suite of benchmarks to show you the performance right because that's what we do so we ran shadow of the Tomb Raider here and as you can see the performance is really really average nowhere near what we saw with the performance in windows with the a770 [Music] thank you [Music] then we ran Union superposition and we could only get the 4K optimized Benchmark to run right only one Benchmark out of the three that we usually do with that single test there I started to see a bit of a pattern emerging next up we ran cyberpunk 2077 with dxvk with proton the system hung it didn't work didn't even get close to launching when I clicked play it just straight up freeze all right cyberpunk 2077 using proton it doesn't matter which version of proton that we use we see the same result here ready play if this works in any of these then I'll definitely eat my words but I won't be eating any words so the second we hit play move the mouse oh it launched unbelievable unfreaking believable unfreakin believable it actually worked well I couldn't get this to work before and now it's working this might be the only time that I've eaten my words ladies and gentlemen video graphics will set that to the high preset all that other stuff is fine we'll run it at 4K and we'll see what happens look at that a very cinematic 17 frames per second foreign [Music] I can't believe cyberpunk actually worked after me fiddling with it for hours and it not working and then I just worked all of a sudden this is actually a bad thing as well because this just shows that it's unpredictable I wonder if it will launch again it probably will now that I said every other time when I click to play there it is it happened yes yes it only ran once look completely hung up completely unresponsive I can't do anything yes yes I don't know why I'm happy about it not working then we moved on to Horizon zero Dawn I got this to Launch once and then it froze I didn't even get to the point where I could run the Benchmark I clicked start Benchmark and get hung and then the game never launched again the system completely hung up all right here's Horizon zero Dawn please don't make me look stupid by working oh no no launchy nope unfortunately the game has crashed uh no and it doesn't matter what version of proton we use to launch that that's no dice next up what I decided to do was actually go through my steam library and install a bunch of games that natively run on Linux so I installed CS go City skylines Universe Sandbox and just a couple titles to see what the story was with the Intel Arc GPU on Linux so first of all I ran CS go or more like I didn't run CS go because the second I clicked launch it presented a black screen and instantly crashed let me show you what I was talking about with cs go just so you can get a bit of an understanding is to my reasoning behind my little bit of rantiness right CS go this is a native Linux binary ready here we go see us go the most uh beloved video game of all time and this is about as far as we get yeah this is really good I love my black screen CS go look at that CS go Linux 64 is not responding if we wait it still hangs if we don't wait we force quit and we force quit now CS go is a game that you would think would work it's been out for a very long time it runs really well natively on Linux with other gpus but with the Intel Arc GPU it absolutely crashed and burned right it just would not work and there was no way for me to actually get this to work I wasted a lot of time on this next up something a bit more interesting I ran Universe Sandbox this works this one works let's see if it actually shows us the warning there it is there it is you have 512 megabytes of video memory but 2048 megabytes is required it's a 16 gig card hopefully you can read that but this actually runs quite well right I'm not going to be doing a lot here this is just well that's very bright Hey look it's your mom's planet Uranus your anus I know it's not pronounced Uranus it's Uranus why can't they just change the name of it why would they call it Uranus Universe Sandbox isn't a game it's kind of like a universe simulator and I'm happy to report that Universe Sandbox actually worked other than that little video memory warning this ran without any issue whatsoever he could crank the settings up all the way you can write it at 4K this is a really CPU bound physics simulation of the universe so the GPU doesn't play too much into it you only need two gigs of video memory as it is anyway and it seemed to run fine the next thing I wanted to test was City skylines now I actually didn't have hope that this would work at all but I'm happy to report City skylines ran fine at least in my limited knowledge of how to play this game because I have played uh all of maybe an hour of this game in my whole life but it seemed to launch and run and actually get into the games without any problems the biggest surprise for me was the fact that CS go didn't work in Linux even though it's a native binary and we've seen Intel Arc GPU support and performance improve at CS go in Windows over the last few months so in Windows the GPU is looking to be fairly okay especially for people who are looking at a decent mid-range GPU but for Linux users out there who are looking at getting into buying an Intel Arc GPU for now I would say absolutely avoid any intel Arc gpus now the other thing I wanted to address is I've seen a few videos from people talking about and commenting on the arc gpus and Linux and saying that the support is good and whatnot but those people haven't even bought one of these gpus themselves they don't even own one they've never even used one in Linux so commenting on the usability and stability of these gpus and Linux without actually using them makes absolutely no sense to me it's uh kind of ridiculously from being honest if you want to have an opinion on something show the testing so we can see it actually working don't just say that it's working all well and good obviously I haven't tested every single game on earth with the a770 and Linux however there are a few indications to kind of point in the direction of this GPU just not being ready for Linux users now out of all the tests we did shadow of the Tomb Raider ran fine right it ran fine all that at 4K 40 frames per second it's looking a bit cinematic if we look at the unigen superposition performance we can only run at 4K optimize and the performance there was pretty average we couldn't even get other resolutions to run so you know that's to really show you what's going on with stability now CS go again very confusing that it wouldn't even launch at all it just doesn't work cyberpunk and Horizon zero Dawn the fact that it doesn't give you an error message it doesn't give you anything to indicate that there's a problem the system quite literally hangs up and becomes unresponsive which plays on the stability now as for other workloads in Linux as far as I can tell especially with things like blender and from reports that I've seen it's average but from what I've experienced today and the last few days with the Intel Arc gpus in Linux it's a no from me yeah and I didn't expect this video to go this way but it honestly frustrated me that much that almost nothing that I really wanted to do worked in Linux why Linux I mean Ubuntu 222.04 so yeah avoid avoid avoid avoid don't don't buy this if you're going to be using Linux and I think that's just about going to do it for this really weird video usually I like to talk about positive things in the tech world but this is just something that I find is a bit of a problem and that ladies and gents is the state of Intel arc on Linux right now and there's nothing to say that it won't change in the future but for now it's a bit of a nightmare now if you like videos like this let me know in the comments and let me know everything that I said wrong especially if you're really into Linux laughs I'm sorry it just had to be said but I love you guys oh very very much and I do appreciate your feedback and all these kinds of videos and this video is probably going to make some people pretty mad but that's okay right that's what we're here for everyone's got an opinion but I've got some facts here because I've actually used the thing in Linux anyways hit the Subscribe button hit the like button do all that jazz once again thank you so very much for watching I'm your boy Nick with gear Seekers you Peak we seeking what a time to be alive imagine people getting angry on the internet and imagined [Laughter] thanks for watching you're all amazing I'm not even being sarcastic I actually think you guys are amazing thanks for watching thanks for watching thanks for watching let's take a look at how broken this is

Channel: Gear Seekers

Views: 9,512

Keywords:

Id: RMLNLj4-fBs

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 24 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/emooon]

Oh boy that's abysmal. You should post that on r/linux_gaming as well before some poor soul spends money on this.

Edit: Oh nevermind you already did :D

[u/The_SacredSin]

Yeah I would not take his word for it. I mean he clearly does not use Linux on a daily basis or he would have known to not use such an old kernel and to use the Mesa drivers.

[u/Brazilianboylurks]

It will probably get much better when Linux 6.2 and Mesa 23 start to roll out. I really like how these cards are designed.

[u/gnarlin]

That drill bit won't work on the screws on that card.