On Tuesday, Intel began shipping Iris Xe graphics cards to PC makers. Iris Xe is Intel's first separate discrete GPU. But immediately after the announcement, an important clue was revealed. It was said that Iris Xe was not compatible with AMD-based PCs.
An Intel spokesman told PCWorld, “Iris Xe external cards can be installed on 9th generation (Coffee Lake-S) and 10th generation (Comet Lake-S) Intel Core desktop processors and motherboards based on Intel B460, H410, B365, and H310C chipsets. . "The specific BIOS that supports Iris Xe is only on these motherboards, so it won't be compatible with other motherboards."
It is known that there are unfortunate limitations in the most essential part at the last minute. Conversely, NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon external graphics cards can be installed anywhere on a PC with a PCIe slot. Of course, you can use NVIDIA GPUs in PCs with AMD Ryzen processors. This hardware has been verified for completeness, but Intel GPUs have just been released. In the future, it remains to be seen whether Intel's move will only complement the technical problems of first-generation products and reduce the validation burden by keeping the supported chipset and CPU range narrow, or expand the policy toward gaming-oriented cards.
It's a shame that Intel's first graphics card isn't compatible with AMD-based PCs, but this release is actually unusual. The purpose of the Iris Xe GPU is not for gaming, and DIY PC assembly users will not purchase it directly. The Xe is sold as an integrated part in PCs pre-developed for mainstream users or small businesses, so even if it is not compatible with AMD PCs, it is not a loss to home users right away. Crucially, the initial release products mentioned in this article are low-end parts.
The desktop external card also uses the low-power Xe LP architecture of Intel's Iris Xe Max external notebook GPU. In fact, desktop products use chips with fewer execution units and perform slightly lower than their siblings' mobile products. Intel plans Xe LP-based graphics cards for multimedia and creative work. It highlights the benefits of video encoding or AI workloads based on specific Intel technologies. Ultimately, the Xe HPG graphics chip will also focus more on gaming performance.
Nevertheless, the announcement related to the Iris Xe desktop will someday leave NVENC and raw graphics horsepower to the fast NVIDIA graphics card along with the multi-core AMD Ryzen processor, and the AI acceleration function is fantastic content from the Iris Xe GPU supporting Intel Quick Sync and DP4a. It conveys hope that a production system can be created.
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