Intel Xe architecture is one of Intel’s big bets for the following years, with it they intend not to be left behind in a section in which their rival AMD is years ahead, graphics equipment, the usefulness and market of which today goes far beyond games.
Intel Xe Dedicated GPUs Do Not Work with AMD Processors
The reason is that a special UEFI BIOS is required for Intel Xe GPUs to work. The information comes from Legit Reviews and following the announcement that several manufacturers will start including Intel graphics cards in their computers. Which will be based initially on a version of the Intel DG1 or Xe-LP with 80 execution units.
These cards are rather low-end and not intended for gamer enthusiasts, but the fact that a special UEFI BIOS is required means these GPUs can only be used with Intel processors. For the moment we do not know if those based on the DG2 architecture like the future Xe-HP, Xe-HPG and Xe-HPC will have this type of limitation, but, in any case, it would be a way for Intel to link its customers exclusively to your processors.
And not with all Intel processors
Additional information on this controversial issue can be found in a statement to Legit Reviews by an Intel spokesperson:
Dedicated Iris Xe boards will be sold paired with 9th Gen (Coffe Lake-S) and 10th Gen Intel Core desktop processors alongside Intel B460, H410, B365 and H310C motherboards as part of prebuilt systems. These motherboards have a special BIOS version that supports Intel Iris Xe, so the boards will only work in these systems.
Therefore, not only does it not work with AMD systems, but Intel has created a graphics card that only works with certain models of motherboards and will not be sold beyond that. If you are planning to buy a pre-built PC with one of the Iris Xe, you should know that you will not be able to reuse it if you change the motherboard to change the processor or if the motherboard itself breaks, whether from Intel or AMD.
Is this a good decision on Intel’s part?
Obviously, from the user’s point of view this is not the case, but if it were applied in the high performance computing market we would be talking about a defense mechanism against NVIDIA and AMD, where their GPUs are. designed to communicate between CPU and GPU with proprietary interfaces such as NVLink and Infinity Fabric.
One of the most important markets for Intel and under which they have more contracts is precisely the HPC market, in which AMD can offer combinations of Zen processors and Radeon GPUs as a joint package and after the purchase of Xilinx AMD has become much more dangerous for Intel in all markets. In the case of NVIDIA, if they complete their ARM purchase, they will no longer need to use Intel processors, and we’ve seen IBM POWER processors using the NVLink interface to communicate with NVIDIA GPUs before.
It is therefore logical that Intel, facing certain markets, defends itself to maintain its position, what we do not see sense is in the games market, but the Intel Xe-HPG still does not appear.
