Intel Arc Graphics A380: Compelling For Open-Source Enthusiasts & Developers At ~$139

In the past several days of testing the Arc Graphics A380, from the support side it's been going well -- assuming you meet the version requirements I laid out in the prior article. The ASRock A380 graphics on Linux require at least Linux 6.0 while using the i915.force_probe module option, Mesa 22.2 or newer (of course, Mesa Git is preferred with the DG2/Alchemist graphics still being worked out), and linux-firmware.git for the latest DG2 GuC firmware. If wanting GPU compute support you'll also need to grab the latest Intel Graphics Compiler (IGC), Compute-Runtime, and related dependencies.

Right now that's all bleeding-edge with Linux 6.0 not even being out as stable until early October. Presumably we'll see Intel offer back-ported DKMS support or some sort of packaged drivers for enterprise Linux distributions on older software stacks, but at least for now it means running the very latest upstream code for Arc Graphics on Linux.

This very latest upstream support is also still stabilizing with features like Vulkan ray-tracing being finished up, Intel Smooth Sync and other new features still working their way to mainline, and then the performance optimization work.

The state with Linux 6.0 was good enough for a developer box with the GPU being fast enough for a composited desktop, the display support working reliably, etc. There were some quirks encountered like on rebooting the system, the i915 driver would fail at boot with pipe errors sent to the kernel log. However, from a cold boot the i915 driver would then work just fine, as one of the items worth mentioning for guidance.

Assuming you are an experienced Linux user comfortable with rolling your own kernel and Mesa (or make use of third-party repositories) and able to work through the early quirks of Intel's new dGPU support, the A380 on Linux was an exciting experience. In particular, for finally having an Intel discrete GPU for worthwhile testing of more Intel oneAPI software components and experimenting with Intel's open ecosystem around all their high performance libraries, utilities for creators, etc. At $139, it's a great budget card for experimenting with Intel's open-source software not only with the graphics driver stack itself but particularly the growing user-space software stack with oneAPI, embracing SYCL, etc.

In fact, setting up the Intel Compute-Runtime was one of the easiest experiences getting OpenCL 3.0 working on Linux. And it's open-source! Unlike the Radeon ROCm stack with its limited Linux distribution support and also being limited in the range of Radeon graphics cards it supports... Or how long it took ROCm to add support for AMD RDNA(2) consumer graphics cards. It was exciting having a $139 graphics card working with a fully open-source GPU compute stack.

From that developer perspective alone, the Arc Graphics A380 is great for hobbyists, open-source users wanting to run a fully open driver stack (sans the GuC firmware, just as the AMD Linux graphics driver also requires closed-source firmware), and learning/experimenting with Intel's open software ecosystem.

I actually bought two of these ASRock Challenger A380 graphics cards and I am glad I did. My motivation with two was for having one reserved for benchmarks and then another I can tuck away in a rack-mounted system with easy SSH access whenever wanting to easily test new workloads on the graphics card, try out new kernels / Mesa / etc with ease. Additionally, to try out a multi-GPU Arc Graphics setup.

While the Arc Graphics A380 is great for Linux developers and hobbyists wanting to run an open-source driver stack, it's not for beginners or gamers. Until the Arc Graphics DG2/Alchemist support is more widespread by tier-one Linux distributions and doesn't require running a bleeding-edge kernel and Mesa, it's not easy for inexperienced users to get going with the GPU acceleration. As well, it's tough to expect customers to ride a yet-to-be-stable kernel just to have working graphics acceleration. But those are temporary limitations and hopefully by year's end we'll begin seeing more broad availability of Arc Graphics Linux driver support, especially if Intel is able to offer any back-ported/packaged solution for existing Linux distributions just as AMD does with their Radeon Software for Linux package.

The other reason it's not yet a recommendation for novice Linux users or gamers is the gaming performance. Right now the Arc Graphics A380 performance on Linux is coming up short of expectations. Let's take a look.