Intel Arc B50 Pro
A while back I bought an Intel ARC B50 Pro GPU. I selected this particular GPU for a variety of reasons, the most important of which was it's support for IO-SRV and VF's.
It was a 16G card, and low power (50-70 watts depending upon who you ask), it provided adequate performance for the only video game I spend any time in, an ancient MMORPG known as Flyff, I play Insanity Flyff.
When I first acquired it, I set it up with a 2G VF, and a 12G VF leaving 2G for the PF. The PF is linux, vf0 was intended as a GPU pass through to a Windows VM, and vf1 to run a 15B quant 5 AI model under llama.cpp.
Initially everything worked except Windows only saw the pass through GPU as a compute not as a display. This may be because I have only one of the display ports in use and so Windows is seeing the others as headless.
Then Intel updated the drivers, and it would only allow even multiples of powers of two as memory allocations 1g, 2g, 4g, 8g, but NOT 12g, so I was screwed for a while and could
only use a 5B model.
I've been working with Intel support to resolve this, they first try to blow me off until I get persnickity and tell them I bought the card for this feature and now this feature isn't working, can I have access to the old working drivers? No, but try these.
So I try these, now it says it lets me assign 12g but the 12g partition doesn't work, llama.cpp gets out of host memory, and no matter what slices I assign vulkan info no longer work.
The hardware I think is brilliant, it really punches far above it's weight for a 70 watt $300 card, but the software is still a work in progress.
Nanook
in reply to Nanook • •I realize that with a 9th Gen I have only one PCIE lane gen 3, I realize this means I/O will be slower than if I had eight gen 5 PCIE lanes available, but that isn't relevant to the memory allocation issue, neither is my non-preemption patch. You know this, I know this, and as far as I am concerned this is bad faith. I will share this for others considering ARC graphics cards so that they can know what they are in store for as far as support goes.
On 11/7/26 04:17, Intel Customer Support wrote:
> Intel Customer Support
>
> Hello Robert Dinse,
>
>
>
> Case Number : 06993433
>
>
>
> Thank you for your patience and for the detailed information you have provided throughout this case. We understand the effort you have put into this setup and appreciate your engagement with Intel Support.
>
>
>
> After a thorough review of your system configuration, we have identified the following items that fall outside Intel's validated and supported configuration for the Intel® Arc™ Pro B50 Graphics card :
>
>
>
> Processor - Intel® Core™ i7-9700K (9th Gen, Coffee Lake)
> The Intel® Arc™ Pro B50 Graphics card requires a minimum of a 10th Gen Intel® Core™ Processor or a supported AMD Ryzen platform. The Intel® Core™ i7-9700K (9th Generation) is not listed as a supported processor platform for this product. Please refer to the Intel® Arc™ Pro Graphics Desktop Quick Start Guide for the full list of supported hardware configurations.
> Kernel - Upstream kernel 7.2.13 with custom patches (ACSO patch, PREEMPT_NONE patch)
> Intel validates Arc Pro graphics support against distribution-provided kernels on supported Ubuntu releases. The use of an upstream kernel with custom third-party patches is outside the validated software stack and may contribute to unexpected behavior, including the SR-IOV allocation and Vulkan issues you have described.
>
>
>
> As the current system configuration does not meet Intel's supported hardware and software requirements for the Intel® Arc™ Pro B50, we are unable to provide further technical investigation or resolution under the standard support scope.
>
>
>
> As there are no further supported actions available at this time, we will be proceeding with the closure of this support case.
>
>
>
> Thank you for contacting Intel Support.
>
> Sign in to view and update your request or to get additional information. You can also reply to this email with questions or comments.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Lohith G.
> Intel Customer Support
>
>
> Use of Intel sites and services is subject to these terms of use. For more information about Intel’s privacy practices please visit here.
>
> **********************PLEASE DO NOT
>
>
> I realize that with a 9th Gen I have only one PCIE lane gen 3, that isn't relevant to the memory allocation issue, neither is my non-preemption patch. You know this, I know this, and as far as I am concerned this is bad faith.
> On 11/7/26 04:17, Intel Customer Support wrote:
>> Intel Customer Support
>>
>> Hello Robert Dinse,
>>
>>
>>
>> Case Number : 06993433
>>
>>
>>
>> Thank you for your patience and for the detailed information you have provided throughout this case. We understand the effort you have put into this setup and appreciate your engagement with Intel Support.
>>
>>
>>
>> After a thorough review of your system configuration, we have identified the following items that fall outside Intel's validated and supported configuration for the Intel® Arc™ Pro B50 Graphics card :
>>
>>
>>
>> Processor - Intel® Core™ i7-9700K (9th Gen, Coffee Lake)
>> The Intel® Arc™ Pro B50 Graphics card requires a minimum of a 10th Gen Intel® Core™ Processor or a supported AMD Ryzen platform. The Intel® Core™ i7-9700K (9th Generation) is not listed as a supported processor platform for this product. Please refer to the Intel® Arc™ Pro Graphics Desktop Quick Start Guide for the full list of supported hardware configurations.
>> Kernel - Upstream kernel 7.2.13 with custom patches (ACSO patch, PREEMPT_NONE patch)
>> Intel validates Arc Pro graphics support against distribution-provided kernels on supported Ubuntu releases. The use of an upstream kernel with custom third-party patches is outside the validated software stack and may contribute to unexpected behavior, including the SR-IOV allocation and Vulkan issues you have described.
>>
>>
>>
>> As the current system configuration does not meet Intel's supported hardware and software requirements for the Intel® Arc™ Pro B50, we are unable to provide further technical investigation or resolution under the standard support scope.
>>
>>
>>
>> As there are no further supported actions available at this time, we will be proceeding with the closure of this support case.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thank you for contacting Intel Support.
>>
>> Sign in to view and update your request or to get additional information. You can also reply to this email with questions or comments.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Lohith G.
>> Intel Customer Support
>>
>>
>> Use of Intel sites and services is subject to these terms of use. For more information about Intel’s privacy practices please visit here.
>>
>> **********************PLEASE DO NOT DELETE**********************
>>
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>>
>> Thread-Token: thread::3SHSzlpNeZmOYvWGAgr3jFA::
>>
>> You must include this text in any reply to this email. Thank you.
>>
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