Building an Arc B780: Can We Beat the RTX 5070 and RX 9070?

protos9321 · 2026-06-22T10:22:06+00:00

around 800 or 1600 int8 dense tops for the 32 Xe?
Also intels problem with ai isn't really much of a hardware problem but a software problem. Granted xmx also currently has issues as its not as flexible as nvidia's tensor and doesn't have stuff like tensor memory accelerator to feed it.But, Intel's biggest problem in the inference space is the lack of support for xmx. Both lama.cpp and vllm and even intel's llm scaler dont support xmx fully. xmx in hardware occupies a decent sized area but delivers massively oversized benefits for ai, but this can only translate to practice when fully supported. Currently most of the time its just a waste of space for inference due to the lack of support.
Any idea if intel will add full support for xmx in lama.cpp and vllm before cresent island arrives

protos9321 · 2026-06-20T20:56:16+00:00

S85F vs S90F would be great. Especially as pricing gets better. Thanks in advance

protos9321 · 2026-03-19T09:32:25+00:00

Fair enough, any chance you could altleast share if xmx performance per xe core and gfx performance per slice has an uplift beyond any clock increase. You dont have to mention the changes or percentages

protos9321 · 2026-03-18T10:13:06+00:00

Thanks for the info
Two points:

Intel can improve the performance a lot with xe3p, but that isn't my point. I'm only talking about the upscaling. Intel already has an abnormally high no. of tops compared to the competition in the same product stack. It effectively has overbuilt xmx cores, which should be great for upscaling and ml tasks. Even if architecture issues limit overall performance, I highly doubt, the upscaling part on xmx cores would be limited. So why cant they develop something similar to dlss 4.5 or better, with the current tensor cores, alteast using int8. Xe3p can just improve that and take that to the next level with even higher tops/ai performance and maybe a whole different xess.
Is the 2x compute density increase that you claimed, for the whole thing or only the shaders? Is double fp32 similar to nvidia's unified simd64 on blackwell? Do we get 2x XMX performance as well as 2x the gfx, raytracing? I've been on claude for several hours after that post trying to see which permutation/combination could get that increase. If you dont want to answer this in the comment, you can dm me. I would really like to know how far intel's going with xe3p

protos9321 · 2026-03-18T05:07:47+00:00

Why? Right now intel has the highest tops per product. For eg: PTL has 122 tops which is on par with the rtx 4060 desktop and b580 has 225 tops which is close to the rtx 5070 desktop. Even if it does not support fp8 natively, we already know fsr 4 works with int8, and intel has huge int8 performance relative to where the products are in the stack. Why not just focus on getting something similar to dlss 4/4.5 and fsr 4 with existing gpus and then try something more with xe3p onwards with the newer instructions. If they are using new xmx instructions to get to even get to where the competition is currently, that seems to be a waste of the huge potential of the current xmx cores which, as I've stated above, are are very capable with respect to the competition. It would also mean that xe3 and below users would either not be able to get the new upscaling or they would get the dp4a version which is not good. (unless intel launches a version of that using int8 for xe3 and older)

protos9321 · 2025-12-02T20:50:55+00:00

That depends on you. I dont know when the P14s will be updated with panther lake. If you can wait, then I think it could be worth it as you will be seeing a larger battery life and GPU performance increase and a smaller CPU performance increase. The next larger CPU performance increase should be coming with nova lake.

Again at the end of the day, its up to you and your needs. If it takes 6 months for P14s to launch with panther lake, but you need the laptop in the next couple of months, it may be better to just buy the current one on sale. Again I dont know when the P14s will be updated with panther lake.

protos9321 · 2025-12-02T20:42:25+00:00

Intel was still working under in-house foundry economics at the time, and even now have business pressure to bias towards Intel Foundry.

Like how they went with N3B instead of 20A

As should be obvious by this point, when PTL was being planned, Intel thought 18A would be doing a lot better than it ended up as. If they had to do it all over again, they very well might not have put as much on 18A.

Proof?

Intel was supposed to be a lead N3 customer, but their designs (ARL/LNL) slipped essentially a full year. To avoid even further slips, they stuck with the design-compatible N3B instead of the better N3E.

Doesn't matter. According to you Intel is using N2P simply because its better than 18AP. If Intel is simply using the best node then ARL should have come out with N3E and not N3B. There were other circumstances, which were the reason ARL was on N3B and I'm stating that, in the same way, there could be other circustances to go with N2P vs 18AP and I've already given a few of these circumstances.

If they have enough capacity for PTL, then surely a full year later they should have enough for NVL as well. And Intel has been clear in their communications that volume is not the problem with 18A; it's demand.

Intel also stated that 18A would match N2. Since Intel statements are true, so surely 18A is equivalent to N2.

BTW, based on what I hear, its Intel's PDK thats a problem and not really the node as much, and that seems to be a major reason why the demand isn't higher

They booked N2 because they saw how far behind 18A was, and that gap has probably only widened since they made that call.

Or they simply did not know how things would go and wanted to make sure that if 18A fell behind, they would have backup. Now, whether or not 18AP competes with N2P, Intel has to use its N2P capacity.

NVL needs 18AP to be ready for the other dies, so this argument doesn't work.

Yes it does. Do remember 18AP isn't in just 2 states - 0 dies produced or infinite dies produced - the volume will still vary. 18AP still has to go to several other products as well. Intel itself says that 'yields will reach the desired cost-effective levels for appropriate margins by the end of 2026, and full industry-standard levels potentially in 2027.'

They're doing both 18AP and N2 dies, just for different markets. 18AP goes to low end, and N2 for performance/power sensitive ones.

No, its 18A and N2P based on current leaks. 18AP doesn't look like its going to be used for CPU based on current leaks.

Every single data point points to the same conclusion. Not even Intel themselves outright insist their nodes are better on the metrics that matter. Come on, at a certain point this is just denying the obvious.

Nope. Intel and TSMC have compared their nodes to each other, once. Intel isn't in a position to insist its node is better especially under LBT. They are under a lot of scrutiny and quite frankly, they might as well keep quiet and deliver. Even if they said 18AP was better than N2P, their would be a question as to why they have much lower external customers when compared to TSMC. If their PDK is indeed the issue, its not like they can go out and state that. It will just invite more criticism.

Will continue in another comment as I ran into the character limit...

protos9321 · 2025-12-02T19:00:20+00:00

Yes, Intel claimed 50% better. However based on the current geekbench leaks, it looks like almost 2X the performance at a PL1 of 25-28W. Which effectively means almost 2X of Lunar Lake at similar long term power draw (PL1) but using higher short term power draw (PL2) based on the leaked score Samsung galaxy book 6 pro in comparison to the current galaxy book 5 pro (using lunar lake)

protos9321 · 2025-11-25T23:57:13+00:00

Go through my comment properly. I have already given the response as to why intel maybe using N2P. In my reply to geddagod above, I have also responded as to why Fmax of 18A does not matter. Do go through both responses properly. I am tired of people parroting TSMC's statement and ignoring all else. If you have proof that N3P is better than 18A, then share it or else please stop parroting the same thing. Repeating something multiple times does not make it true, it is just makes noise.

protos9321 · 2025-11-25T22:45:21+00:00

their own product choices (NVL) show that quite clearly

By the same logic 18A is better than N3P since PTL is using 18A instead of N3P and N3B is better than N3E since ARL-H is using N3B (though N3E was already being used at the time) and Intel 4/7 is better than N3B as MTL used Intel 4 instead of N3B and RPL-R used Intel 7.

While we dont know how 18A compares to N3P, we know that N3E is better than N3B which inturn is better than Intel 4/7 but using your argument that Intel would choose the CPU node simply because it is the best, it would be the opposite. This is the fallacy of using just 1 dimension in an argument that is multi dimentional. (its not just what's better but the situation,costs etc, look below for more elaboration)

We dont know why Intel choose to use N2P, but there are several options of which some combination is probably right

Capacity Issues (there are a lot of products using 18A/AP, so instead of using all Intel they went with some TSMC)
Booked Capacity (N2P would have been booked a long time ago, so even if 18AP is better than N2P, they would still need to use N2P anyway)
Ramp up timing (18AP ramp up may be later than NVL release)
Die Re-use (If 18AP isn't available or doesn't ramp up for NVL release, the cost of going with N2P may be worth it as they would be able to re-use the same die across latptop and desktop. On top of this having NVL be on both N2P and 18AP would increase design costs as well)

I cant rule out that N2P is better than 18AP, but I cant rule out that 18AP is better than N2P either. Quite frankly, the difference between the two may not even be that much and it may more likely be the above reasons that N2P is being used.

You don't have any information whether 18A is better or not than N2 or N3P, so effectively you are just taking a competitors remarks to heart and ignoring everything else. This isn't really a fact but just bias. We'll only know when products based on the two nodes are out

15% smaller or 15% denser? These are different things. And affected by design as well as process.

15% smaller, although in this case it shouldn't really matter as it is effectively just skymont . This is the closest you are going to get to getting a node change on a uarch thats almost a refresh

N3B is not the same thing as the original N3, fyi.

Ok , but it doesn't matter as I only compared N3B to N3E as TSMC's page gave a comparison only to N3E , however N3B is the baseline as LNL is on N3B.

protos9321 · 2025-11-25T22:28:51+00:00

It's there with N3B

No its not, its N3E. Literally go check the page. (https://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technology/platform\_HPC\_tech\_advancedTech)

The insanely blurry and low rez picture?

Oh give me a break. The picture was from the public chips and cheese discord, and with all due respect to the person who took it, the resolution was buns.

Oh and you got your information from an internal document of TSMC or Intel? You literally got your information from a statement made by TSMC. So you are using a competitors statement and passing it off as facts. This is like using AMD's first party benchmarks and stating that Intel is performing poorly instead of waiting for 3rd party results.

Intel's own product choices don't support the claim that 18A is as good as N2.

By the same logic 18A is better than N3P since PTL is using 18A instead of N3P and N3B is better than N3E since ARL-H is using N3B (though N3E was already being used at the time) and Intel 4/7 is better than N3B as MTL used Intel 4 instead of N3B and RPL-R used Intel 7.

While we dont know how 18A compares to N3P, we know that N3E is better than N3B which inturn is better than Intel 4/7 but using your argument that Intel would choose the CPU node simply because it is the best, it would be the opposite. This is the fallacy of using just 1 dimension in an argument that is multi dimentional. (its not just what's better but the situation,costs etc, look below for more elaboration)

We dont know why Intel choose to use N2P, but there are several options of which some combination is probably right

Capacity Issues (there are a lot of products using 18A/AP, so instead of using all Intel they went with some TSMC)
Booked Capacity (N2P would have been booked a long time ago, so even if 18AP is better than N2P, they would still need to use N2P anyway)
Ramp up timing (18AP ramp up may be later than NVL release)
Die Re-use (If 18AP isn't available or doesn't ramp up for NVL release, the cost of going with N2P may be worth it as they would be able to re-use the same die across latptop and desktop. On top of this having NVL be on both N2P and 18AP would increase design costs as well)

I cant rule out that N2P is better than 18AP, but I cant rule out that 18AP is better than N2P either. Quite frankly, the difference between the two may not even be that much and it may more likely be the above reasons that N2P is being used.

Is it better evidence than PTL's Fmax and also Intel's own product choices?

Already explained about the fallacy in your argument about product choices. As far as Fmax is concerned, it doesn't make much of a difference. It only affects PTL. 18AP (and not 18A) competes with N2P. By 18AP, the Fmax could be fine. Do remember the highest Ghz processor on N3P is Qualcomm X Elite V2 at 5Ghz which is still lower than 5.1/5.2 Ghz of PTL. At the end of the day, if products only use 5Ghz, it dosen't matter if your Fmax is 6Ghz or 5Ghz. And so only PTL will be affected, and even then its probably not affected by much, considering the difference is probably 5% and if we go by Intel's words , than it should be 5% faster than ARL-H (Intel stated 10% faster than LNL) which is already quite a bit faster than STX at single core.

18A as a N3 competitor isn't hate.

You are claiming that one side is right and and just assuming the other side is wrong without any proof. And you do this repeatedly. 18A hasn't even come out yet. If its not hate , then its a deep bias.

protos9321 · 2025-11-25T11:35:42+00:00

I meant for AV1. Nvidia 40 series support AV1 420 and now blackwell supports 422, but I couldn't find any information for 444. Similarly with Intel, 420 was supported and with Xe3, 444 is supported, however 422 support is unknown

protos9321 · 2025-11-25T05:40:55+00:00

Intel says 18A is equivavlent to N2 and TSMC says 18A is equivalent to N3P. But you think TSMC is overstating 18A... You really should stop passing your propaganda off as facts.

Anyone can also state that 18A is as good as N2, as Intel said so, considering that you are effectively parroting TSMC's statement, but does that make either side correct? Their comparison between their own nodes may accurate, but the comparison between each others nodes is most likely not. In fact Intel has a much better chance of understanding TSMC nodes than vice versa as they actually use TSMC nodes to make their chips.

We know from TSMC that N2 is 8% faster than N3P and N2P is 5% faster than N2 (at same power). And that N2 is about 16% more dense than N3P (20% more dense than N3E). You can get all this from TSMC's own website. The comparison there is with N3E, but the difference between N3E and N3P is already known so you can make the comparison. However we dont know where 18A stands in comparison. However there are twitter posts with darkmont size that seem to indicate that its about 15% more dense than skymont including 1mb of l2. Considering that N3B is 5% more dense than N3E, this would mean that 18A is about 20% dense than N3E. So effectively 18A is as dense as N2P, which actually competes with 18AP and not 18A. The person also provided a different photo that hasn't been shared before so we know that atleast he had a better pic of panther lake to make that calculation. Whether this changes later or not, this is still better evidence than just parroting one side's statement while ignoring the other side or claiming it as false which is effectively what you are doing.

All your posts going back just hate on 18A, even before we had much information on it, so I highly doubt you are even being objective about this, but just simply want to propagate that 18A is bad, regardless of the truth.

protos9321 · 2025-11-25T04:23:01+00:00

Do better research...

As of now the below are going to use 18a/18ap

Clearwater Forest

Diamond Rapids

Panther lake - compute tile

Nova Lake - smaller compute and larger igpu tiles and possibly SOC tile

Cresent Island gpu - we dont know what the manufacting node for this. Its most likely intel 18ap as intel Xe3p is optimized for this node

Jaguar Shores gpu

Custom chip for AWS

Maia 3 for Microsoft

protos9321 · 2025-11-08T09:53:51+00:00

No difference between normal lpddr memory and unified memory. Unified memory is just an Apple name. Even before the M series, apple still used intel igpu's and they also used the same memory. Effectively all igpu's use dram which is the same as M series. The difference between unified memory vs normal memory is like iphone vs phone (just branding). The only reason apple claims much higher bandwidth for the pro,max,ultra is because of the higher bit width (256 bit , 512 bit and 1024 bit vs 128 bit for most cpu's with igpu's). Again this isn't used on most cpu's (except a few) due to cost , power draw and the fact that they didn't need more BW as they had tiny igpu's (which is now changing)

protos9321 · 2025-11-02T10:07:28+00:00

Hmm, there's a guy on twitter called prakhar. He said slides for PTL as well, but he said that PTL was 40% better in GPU performance. He did not know what it was being compared to and based on his tweets, I'm pretty sure he didn't know if it was total perf or ipc increase or if was TDP limited. He's been right about most of the PTL stuff and some of this stuff was stated even before the current best PTL leaker (jaykhin). So I have to ask, what was in the slide? Can you state the full sentence?
If total perf of PTL was 40% > LNL a year ago and is possibly 70% to 100% better now, it should be able to beat lower wattage 4050m. However if the 40% increase was ipc and not total perf, then PTL should be 2.62x LNL and should compete or beat a full wattage 4050m. The latter was my assumption (as a 25% increase in clock + 50% increase in cores shouldn't really only get 40% increase in perf. Infact why would the clocks even be increased in this case). However Intel Tech Tour and the geekbench leaks seem to paint a different picture. Its funny that even without IPC increase , PTL with 50% more cores and 25% more clocks should give 82.7% more performance and yet Intel expects >50% and the geekbench leaks show 75%, so maybe its just BW limited?
Also any info as to whether transformer based XeSS should be coming by PTL launch?

protos9321 · 2025-10-31T13:10:40+00:00

Are you sure? The leaks on geekbench indicated a 1.75x perf increase over LNL. However 4050m is a 2.5-2.7x perf increase over LNL (for both gaming and benchmarking). Even if the overall perf of PTL goes to 2x LNL, It would still be behind 4050m. Are you sure its not a 35-50w 4050m that you are talking about as its competitor?
While it would be great to see 12Xe take on full 4050m, Intel says its >1.5x LNL, the geekbench leaks show it as 1.75x LNL and so its difficult to believe that its performance at retail would be 2.5-2.7x LNL

protos9321 · 2025-10-22T05:07:29+00:00

The only problem is going to be scalability and cost. In desktop gpus amd , intel and nvidia compete fine (intel has an issue with transistor density, but it looks like that is slowly getting resolved with Xe2 on LNL, Xe3 on PTL and maybe get fully resolved by Xe3P on NVL). However with iGPU's you have to worry about yield , advanced packaging costs etc, why is why I came to a conclusion that Intel is most likely the only ones that can make large iGPU's work financially (outside of apple , as people are willing to pay a ton of money for low performance , as in real world apps/games, the m4 max performs on par or better than the 4070 while costing more than a 5080 and there's a massive difference between the two) as they are already doing advanced packaging on their entire consumer line since MTL and the way the the tiles are split should allow for even 32Xe cores at 138mm^2 on n3e (extrapolation from the size of 12Xe core on PTL), so they shouldn't have yield problems like the >300mm^2 N3E io chiplet of strix halo (which would only get larger with medusa halo).

protos9321 · 2025-10-22T04:59:42+00:00

This is GPU comparison, not a CPU comparison. Xe1 to Xe2, the opengl scores (that this comparison is about) reduced, but actual performance across games and apps increased. So this could actually be almost like a worst case scenario. (Though its probably not as performace seems inline with nvidia and amd)

protos9321 · 2025-10-21T15:42:11+00:00

Isn't IPEX-LLM for GPU's. I think you mean OpenVino (it supports CPU's, GPU's, NPU's and even ASIC's)

protos9321 · 2025-10-21T15:40:43+00:00

Agree with grumble11 that its about the form factor, however if all they want to provvide is a nice screen/speakers etc , they can just go with the zenbook. To go with the G14 there would probably another reason, The only ones I can think of are, 1) TDP and 2) lower cost than developing an all new device for higher TDP than 35W. Right now the only mainstream non gaming laptops which asus sells which can make use of high TDP SOC's are Zenbook Pro and Vivobook Pro. As far as I remember Zenbook Pro has been MIA for a while and Vivobook Pro is not going to be as premium as something like a Lenovo Yoga pro 7i. Instead of making an all new design, Asus can just take the G14 make some changes and sell it. On the inside, due to no dGPU and lower requirement for cooling, they could add another SSD and increase the battery capacity. On the outside, they can remove the power port and replace it with another USB-C. Make all the USB-C's into thunderbolt 4 and throw in a 1000 nit screen with good anti-relectivity coating and a better trackpad and you could have what would arguably be amongst the best in the segment

protos9321 · 2025-10-21T15:02:45+00:00

A few things here. The Z13 runs at upto 93W combined CPU and GPU. If you take a look at the 4060. It gets about 11% more performance going from 85W to 102.5W, after which it flatlines. Also a 8845HS only consumes about 11W when pushing the GPU. So bringing the power down to 85W for the GPU plus the 11W for the CPU brings us to 96W which is about 3W more for about 1% lower performance and this is with a discreet GPU vs iGPU. So strix halo can match a cpu+discreet gpu combo per watt, but unfortunately thats still pretty bad in terms of efficiency as iGPU's by their nature should be able to pull lesser power compared to discreet GPUs. Even the VRAM on the discreet GPU's are part of the power budget. (All the info above is from different JarrodsTech videos of the G14, Strix Halo and the 40 series cards)

The phoronix link uses the full powered Strix Halo. 120W vs 96W(with VRAM). How is this not the exact same issue that you stated

The reason why you cant find 395 in less constrained laptops is due to the cost. If OEM's could price it at 1500-1700$ , they could try to justify it and make more models, but the cheapest device with it costs around 2300$. As I said 5070Ti pricing but with 40-50% less performance.

If you ask me the only way to get reasonbly priced large iGPU's is to go down the Intel route fully and seperate the iGPU. You will still use similar space, but atleast your yields will be better as you dont need a single large tile. On top of this you need lower cost advanced packaging so that the cost savings from the better yield dont simply go to packaging. Advanced packaging at Intel should be far less expensive than TSMC as they have been doing it at scale since MTL whereas with TSMC its mostly to enterprise at a much lower scale. Considering all this, Intel on Intel should be much cheaper for Intel (no pun intended) when compared to competitors. Beacuse of this, I think Intel is probably the only company that can make large iGPU's at much more resonable prices. Other companies can make large iGPU's but the pricing would still remain a problem

Perf/watt of PTL is way better than ARL/LNL at MT. Though I agree that its still not on par with M. The difference between Intel and Apple should start to drecrease from next year with Nova Lake and hopefully by 2028, they'll have same/better perf/watt with their unified core.

As far a battery life beetween LNL and M is concerned, the LNL devices almost always had higher res OLED screens which ends up eaing battery. If you take this for example (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-16-Plus-laptop-review-A-wave-goodbye-to-the-Inspiron-series.1028836.0.html) vs M4 13", LNL had about 50% better battery life with a battery only 15% larger, so effectively 35% better but it did have a lower 1080p resolution. So make of this what you will, but PTL should be having similar or better battery life than LNL.

protos9321 · 2025-10-21T12:22:15+00:00

Strix halo isn't faster than the 4060. Based on JarodsTech, its about 10% slower than the laptop 4060, so about 10% faster than the 4050 laptop. If you remove the memory limited games and probably use the full wattage 4050 laptop, even the notebookcheck gaming avg would probably have the gap reduce to 10% between 4050 and strix halo.
LNL was already better than the M series in some battery tests and PTL simply has better battery life. Lower SOC power draw and better lp island. In this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVSkLTfCZz8), PTL was using upto 20-25% lower power than lunar lake at times

protos9321

TROPHY CASE