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Comment by jorvi | Hacker News Reader

> Unfortunately, today’s midrange cards like the RTX 4060 and RX 7600 only come with 8 GB of VRAM

Just a nit: one step up (RX 7600 XT) comes with 16GB memory, although in clamshell configuration. With the B580 falling inbetween the 7600 and 7600 XT in terms of pricing, it seems a bit unfair to only compare it with the former.

- RX 7600 (8GB) ~€300

- RTX 4060 (8GB) ~€310

- Intel B580 (12GB) ~€330

- RX 7600 XT (16GB) ~€350

- RTX 4060 Ti (8GB) ~€420

- RTX 4060 Ti (16GB) ~€580*

*Apparently this card is really rare plus a bad value proposition, so it is hard to find

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All RTX xx60 cards are really bad value propositions, though (especially in comparison to the xx80 series cards).

If the 4060 was the 3080-for-400USD that everyone actually wants, that'd be a different story. Fortunately, its nonexistence is a major contributor to why the B580 can even be a viable GPU for Intel to produce in the first place.

Not all of them. The 3060 Ti was great because it was actually built on the same underlying chip as the 3070 and 3070 Ti. Which ironically made those less valuable.

But the release of those cards was during Covid pricing weirdness times. I scored a 3070 Ti at €650, whilst the 3060 Ti's that I actually wanted were being sold for €700+. Viva la Discord bots.

I believe 3060 Ti's were in higher demand because they were a great value for shitcoin mining, especially after tuning (e.g. undervolting).

AMD and Intel copy Nvidia's VRAM lead.

The RTX 1060 came with 6GB of VRAM. Four generations later, the 5060 comes with only 2GB more.

I suspect NVidia does not want consumer cards to eat into those lucrative data centre profits?

The cost of 1GB of VRAM is $2.30 see https://www.dramexchange.com

I don’t think it’s accurate to say they’re copying NVidia’s lead. On the mid range it’s been segregated on memory and bus width for a very long time. Your 1060 is a good example actually. The standard GDDR5 versions have a reduced die with six memory controllers vs eight on the 1070 and 1080. The 1060 GDDR5X version a cut down version of the same die as the 1080 and with two memory controllers turned off. The odd sizes of 3 and 6 gigs of memory is due to the way they segmented their chips to have a 192bit bus on the 1060 vs the 256bit bus on the top end. The 5GB version is further chopped down to 160bit.

Those parts competed with the RX480 with 8GB of memory so NVidia was behind AMD at that price point.

AMD had not been competing with the *80/Ti cards at this point for a few generations and stuck with that strategy through today though the results have gotten better SKU to SKU.

And you’re quite right they don’t want these chips in the data center and at some point they didn’t really want these cards competing in games with the top end when placed in SLI (when that was a thing) as they removed the connector from the mid range.

the VRAM chip is cheap, but how to inter-connect them at high speed isn't

But having the VRAM allows you to run the model on the GPU at all, doesn't it? A card with 48GB can run twice as much model than a card with 24GB, even though it takes twice as long. Nobody is expecting to run twice as much model in the same time just by increasing the VRAM.

Without the extra VRAM, it takes hundreds of times divided by batch size longer due to swapping, or tens of times longer consistently if you run the rest of the model on the CPU.

If you want to double the memory and double the total memory bandwidth, sure. That'd need twice as many data lines, or the same lines at twice the speed.

But if you just want to double the memory without increasing the total memory bandwidth, isn't it a good deal simpler? What's 1 more bit on the address bus for a 256 bit bus?

The GPU already has DMA to system RAM. If you're going to make the VRAM as slow as system RAM, then a UMA makes more sense than throwing more memory chips on the GPU.

Why would you slow down VRAM?

Good point. I misunderstood the situation. I figured doubling the VRAM size at the same bus width would halve the bandwidth.

Instead, it appears entirely possible to double VRAM size (starting from current amounts) while keeping the bus width and bandwidth the same (cf. 4060 Ti 8GB vs. 4060 Ti 16GB). And, since that bandwidth is already much higher than system RAM (e.g. 128-bit GDDR6 at 288 GB/s vs DDR5 at 32-64 GB/s), it seems very useful to do so, though I'd imagine games wouldn't benefit as much as compute would.

Actually, it's compute workloads that love bandwidth, they just have hard thresholds on how much memory they need.

You can see this with overclocking VRAM. Greatly benefits mining, slightly or even negatively benefits gaming workloads.

This extends to system RAM too, most applications will see more benefit from better access times rather than higher MT/s.

(author here) When I checked the 7600 XT was much more expensive. Right now it's still $360 on eBay, vs the B580's $250 MSRP, though yeah I guess it's hard to find the B580 in stock

Yeah I guess regional availability really works into it.. bummer

I wonder if the B580 will drop to MSRP at all, or if retailers will just keep it slotted into the greater GPU line-up the way it is now and pocket the extra money.

All sources I've seen say the 4060 Ti 8GB is also really bad value. Here’s GamersNexus for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2b0MWGwK_U.

And that is also one of the most popular cards on prebuilt systems. Just search through Amazon listings and see which card shows up all the damn time.

Prebuilders get priority access and volume discounts, so while it may not be a good value to buy individually, that doesn't necessarily apply to buying it in bulk.

> Intel takes advantage of this by launching the Arc B580 at $250, undercutting both competitors while offering 12 GB of VRAM.

Not sure where you got that 350 EUR number for B580?

330 EUR is roughly reflective of the street price of the B580 in Europe.

For example:

https://www.mindfactory.de/product_info.php/12GB-ASRock-Inte... (~327 EUR)

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sparkle-intel-arc-b580-guardi... (~330 EUR)

https://www.inet.se/produkt/5414587/acer-arc-b580-12gb-nitro... (~336 EUR)

Can confirm, bought mine for about 350 EUR in Latvia from a store that's known to add a bit of markup on things.

Though the market is particularly bad here, because an RTX 3060 12 GB (not Ti) costs between 310 - 370 EUR and an RX 7600 XT is between 370 - 420 EUR.

Either way, I'm happy that these cards exist because Battlemage is noticeably better than Alchemist in my experience (previously had an A580, now it's my current backup instead of the old RX 570 or RX 580) and it's good to have entry/mid level cards.

On Newegg the cheapest in stock is USD$370 as an example. This is consistent for Intel cards unfortunately.

The reviews will say "decent value at RRP" but Intel cards never ever sell anywhere near RRP meaning that when it comes down to it you're much better off not going Intel.

I feel like reviews should all acknowledge this fact by now. "Would be decent value at RRP but not recommended since Intel cards are always %50 over RRP".

I bought the Asus version of the B580 at MSRP of $280 on launch day.

Central Computers in the SF Bay Area keeps them at MSRP. They may not be in stock online, but the stores frequently have stock, especially San Mateo.

Not useful to people outside the area, but then Microcenter also sells at MSRP. So there are non-scalping stores out there.

The trick is to jump on the stock when it arrives.

newegg doesn't have any stock of B580s at hte moment, you're looking at 3rd party sellers who are raising prices (and hence why have stock).

https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=b580&N=8000 to see sold by newegg stock.

I have a Rx 7600 XT that I purchased to run Ollama LLMs. Something just to screw around with.

Works fine with their ollama:rocm docker image on Fedora using podman. No complaints.

Did some gaming, too, just to see how well that works. A few steam games.

Let me know where you could find 4060Ti 16GB for under $1000 USD

What's annoying is they were under $500 just a few months ago.

Bestbuy has the PNY 4060 Ti 16GB in stock right now for $450.

Not any longer...!

This card still seems like a bad proposition. It's roughly similar performance to the 11GB 2080 Ti for double the price. You'd have to really want that extra 5GB.

I still see it in stock for pick up in Bay Area and in Seattle. I tried a Montana zip code and it showed it as available also.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/pny-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4060-ti-...

Most people who want the 4060 Ti 16GB is because they want the 16GB for running LLMs. So yes, they really want that extra 5GB.

I'm actually tempted, but I don't know if I should go for a Mac Studio M1 Max 64GB for $1350 (ebay) or build a PC around a GPU. I think the Mac makes a lot of sense.

I have an M2 Max with 64Gb of ram. It handles everything I throw at it. Runs the 30ish gigabyte deepseek model fine. I will admit for gaming I pretty much just stick to Cyberpunk 2077, Minecraft, Stray, Viscera Cleanup Simulator and old games with open source engine options. I'm happy I can play Cyberpunk with my screen on full brightness using 30w, compared to my Xeon windows machine taking 250w for lower frame rates.

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