However, the first thing that stood out was the driver problems that still exist with certain titles and technologies. Especially since the technical implementation by the boardparter also suggests extreme cost-cutting constraints. Equipping a card, which can consume well over 100 watts with a bit of bad will, with only a measly 2 phases for the GPU is quite sporty, especially since not a single voltage converter is cooled. The lousy assembly including incomplete and too thick pads as well as way too much thermal paste are also in the review. Intel can’t do anything about that, and that’s entirely the board partner’s fault.
What is negative for Intel, however, is the (technical restriction) to current Intel platforms with rBAR. Without this feature, nothing really works, even if the affected application does not actively use rBAR at all. I have already written enough about the possible causes in the teardown. Well, and the power consumption is a chapter of its own. To deliver the same performance as the competitors with up to 50 percentage points more is very questionable, especially since the production node should be the slightly better one.
