Intel Arc B580 GPU Review: A Competitive Mainstream Gaming Challenger

ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend Review - A Mainstream PC Gaming Powerhouse

The Intel Arc B580, the first desktop GPU to utilize Team Blue's second generation Xe2 'Battlemage' architecture, has been a pleasant surprise in that it features none of the issues that plagued the first Intel Arc launch with more consistent across-the-board performance and solid drivers to boot. Yes, the Intel Arc B580 is a much-needed win for Intel, especially in light of all the company's issues and controversies over the past year. Kudos to the Arc Graphics team for sticking with it and delivering a competitive product that could shake up the mainstream GPU market. A quick look at the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend With an MSRP of $249.99, it delivers 1080p and 1440p gaming performance that, on average, outperforms the more expensive GeForce RTX 4060 - even in games with heavy ray tracing. Of course, the journey from the launch of the Intel Arc A750 back in 2022 to today has been a long road, one that has seen Intel's Arc Graphics improve over time thanks to a steady stream of driver and software updates. However, the impressive performance of the new B580 seemingly exposes fundamental flaws with the original Xe architecture and design because everything feels better now. With 12GB of VRAM, the Arc B580 may be a lower-tier model than the Arc A750, but that doesn't mean it's any less impressive. The B580 is the successor to the budget A580 from late 2023, a card whose direct competition was the GeForce RTX 3050. Yeah, having the Arc B580 outperform the GeForce RTX 4060 and the Radeon RX 7600 is impressive - with performance that even gets close to the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti. The additional VRAM helps, especially with 1440p gaming and ray tracing, so it's great to see Intel take the step to add more memory to what is very much a budget mainstream gaming GPU. In ASRock Steel Legend form, you've got a stylish white design that can turn into an RGB light show with a flick of a switch. This enthusiast-grade OC Edition model includes a second 8-pin power connector, which adds overclocking headroom that can be tinkered with using third-party software or the new Intel Graphics Software. The ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend OC Edition's out-of-the-box performance matches Intel's reference design. It offers exceptional cooling and quiet performance, even when stressed. Below is a summary of Intel Arc B-Series 'Battlemage' technology in the Intel Arc B580, applicable to all models. The Intel Arc B580 utilizes the company's second-generation Xe2 HPG or High-Performance Graphics architecture. Compared to NVIDIA's CUDA Cores and AMD's Compute Units, Intel's Xe and now Xe2 architecture breaks down its technology into 'Render Slices,' which contain Xe Cores, Ray Tracing Units, and dedicated Intel XMX AI hardware. These are the building blocks that make up graphics rendering in the modern era, where it's a mix of GPU hardware, AI hardware for boosting performance, and Ray Tracing hardware to process the complex calculations required to deliver genuinely stunning cinematic gaming. As expected, Intel's B-Series moves to a more efficient and cutting-edge process in the form of TSMC 5N. However, this only plays a minor role in each next-gen Xe Core, delivering up to 70% more performance with a 50% improvement in power efficiency. Intel's first-generation Xe architecture and Arc graphics products were impressively engineered, but there was room for improvement. With enhanced compatibility with graphics engines and APIs like DirectX and Vulkan, improved workload distribution, more cache, expanded AI hardware, and more than double the overall ray tracing performance, Xe2 sees the Arc team return to the drawing board to bring measurable improvements to its second-generation Arc Graphics products. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. The Intel Arc B580 features 20 Xe Cores compared to 28 Xe Cores in the first-gen Intel Arc A750, roughly a 28% reduction in overall GPU hardware. And yet, it still manages to deliver a sizeable 30% improvement in 1080p gaming performance. Arc 'Battlemage' and the Xe2 architecture have also been designed for integrated graphics, as seen in Intel's mobile Lunar Lake chips. So, it makes sense that an entry-level desktop GPU product would improve performance and efficiency. Xe2 is also forward-thinking in featuring fixed-function engines within the GPU for rasterization, ray tracing, and DirectX 12 Ultimate technologies like Variable Rate Shading, Mesh Shading, and Sampler Feedback. In developing Xe2, Intel's engineers and architects analyzed various workloads, covering all engines and rendering APIs to improve latency, performance, and efficiency. The team also focused on software and hardware interactions, with some executions improving a massive 66X compared to the first-generation Xe architecture. The Intel Arc B580 also sees the arrival of Intel XeSS 2 for all Arc devices, which combines the AI-powered XeSS Super Resolution upscaling with the brand-new XeSS-FG Frame Generation and XeSS-LL Low Latency technologies. Essentially, XeSS 2 is Intel's answer to NVIDIA's DLSS 3, which combines NVIDIA's Super Resolution technology with Frame Generation and Reflex. With AI-based super-resolution and frame interpolation, Intel's tech is closer to NVIDIA than AMD's. Currently only available in a single title, F1 24, XeSS 2 is a welcome addition to the Arc lineup, offering its version of what has become a GeForce RTX selling point. Finally, for creators, the updated Arc B-Series Media Engine features a new dual-MFX design for encoding and decoding workloads - and can handle up to 8K 10-bit HDR 120 FPS video. With support for a wide range of codecs, including AV1, H265, and HEVC 4:2:2 10-bit encoding and decoding, the Intel Arc B580 is built for media production, streaming, and content creation. The Arc B-Series Display Engine, as seen in the Intel Arc B580, supports up to four monitors at 4K120 HDR with DisplayPort 2.1 and HDMI 2.1a. The Intel Arc B580 is the first second-gen Arc desktop graphics card to launch with the new Xe2 'Battlemage' architecture. As the model name suggests, this is a direct successor to the Intel Arc A580, a cut-down entry-level Arc GPU that debuted several months after the Intel Arc A750. Intel plans to launch a cut-down Intel Arc B570 in January 2025, featuring fewer Xe Cores and 10GB of VRAM. Performance-wise, the Intel Arc B580 is a notable improvement over the Intel Arc A750, making it a viable mainstream alternative to GeForce RTX. One reason Intel has opted for the B580 rather than a B750 is price. Also, NVIDIA and AMD are set to launch a new lineup of GPUs in early 2025, including midrange models that will replace the existing GeForce RTX 4070 and Radeon RX 7800 XT cards. Delivering an RTX 4060-class GPU right now makes sense. Interestingly, the B580 features fewer Xe Cores than the Arc A750 and Arc B580 and lower memory bandwidth. But, as we're talking about Xe2 Cores that offer a massive improvement over the first-gen Xe Cores, the Arc B580 can accomplish more with less. Still, with more memory and higher clock speeds, the power rating is closer to the Arc A750, suggesting that the efficiency gains have been capitalized into more performance. As an OC model, the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend's default clock speed is set to 2800 MHz, a notable increase over the 2670 MHz of the reference design. That said, without overclocking, the peak clock frequency hits the same 2850 MHz, leading to nearly identical performance. However, by increasing power and clock speeds, pushing the draw to over 200W, the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend can easily outperform the reference design of Intel's Limited Edition model. As one of the only sub-$300 or mainstream cards to feature 12GB of VRAM outside of the GeForce RTX 3060, this extra capacity does more than help differentiate the Intel Arc B580 from the pack. It allows the Arc B580 to handle VRAM-intensive titles at both 1080p and 1440p, like Horizon Forbidden West, to deliver exceptional performance when stacked up against 8GB GPUs like the GeForce RTX 4060, the RTX 4060 Ti, and the Radeon RX 7600. If you're a fan of RGB lighting on a GPU, then firing up the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend is akin to waking up on Christmas morning and walking over to a fully lit tree. The good news is that it's entirely optional, with the Steel Legend design including a physical RGB switch to turn off all lighting. This leaves you with the impressive white look and feel that incorporates camo and what looks like a riff on the Superman logo. The striped ring fans blend into the outer shell, leaving you with a design that perfectly fits into a white PC build. With ARGB headers and ASRock's Polychrome Sync lighting, the look can be customized, too, leading to a great-looking GPU. However, looks are just one part of the story here, as the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend is also all about providing excellent thermal performance. All three of the Striped Ring Fans are optimized for improved airflow and will only kick in when GPU and memory temperatures exceed 60 degrees - so you've got silent performance during light workloads. The ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend GPU is also sturdy. It has a stylish metal backplate with visible venting showcasing enhanced v-shaped fins. The heat pipes and nickel-plated contact area are also optimized for thermal performance, reducing temperatures by up to 5 degrees, leading to better cooling than Intel's reference design. Throw in high-quality thermal paste, premium thermal pads, high-quality components, and a Dr.MOS power stage solution, and the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend is ready to tackle the latest PC games. PC gaming not only covers a wide range of genres and styles, from indie games with simple 2D graphics to massive 3D worlds lit by cutting-edge real-time ray tracing technology. With that, the needs and requirements of each gamer vary. High refresh rates and latency reduction become more important than flashy visuals or playing at the highest resolution possible for those who live and breathe fast-paced competitive games. For those who want to live in a cinematic world and become a key player in an expansive narrative, high-fidelity visuals are a stepping stone toward immersion. Our chosen benchmarks cover various games, engines, APIs, and technologies. For the Intel Arc B580, all tests are run at 1080p and 1440p and include results for performance-boosting Super Resolution technologies like NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS. These technologies are becoming increasingly important, with every major release launching with one or more supported Super Resolution technologies. In many ways, DLSS numbers are more important in 2024 than native rendering - a title with ray tracing isn't meant to be played without Super Resolution. However, our benchmark results are still sorted using the 'raw performance' native rendering metric as DLSS, FSR, and XeSS are three different implementations of the same thing. Here's the breakdown of games, graphics settings, and what's being tested. With ray tracing becoming more common in PC games, from racing titles to the still gorgeous Cyberpunk 2077, the Intel Arc B580 outperforms the GeForce RTX 4060 in titles like F1 24, Forza Horizon 5, and Dying Light 2. Although it falters in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and trails the RTX 4060 slightly in Counter-Strike 2, two competitive titles without ray tracing, on average, the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend is 7.1% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 for 1080p gaming and 16.9% faster than the Radeon RX 7600. That result showcases how far behind AMD and RDNA 3 are regarding ray tracing, as the mainstream 7600 is purely a rasterized card. What is clear, though, is that, like GeForce RTX, 'Battlemage' consistently performs impressively across a wide range of games. Non-RT performance in Cyberpunk 2077 is faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti by around 10%. Turn on the game's 'Ultra' ray tracing mode, and performance sits between the RTX 4060 and RTX 4060 Ti, while in Dying Light 2, it matches the RTX 4060 Ti. However, the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend draws more power than both GeForce RTX cards, significantly more than the GeForce RTX 4060, which is still the most efficient 1080p gaming performer on the market. The average performance chart above includes Super Resolution numbers because technology like DLSS is one of those things most gamers will enable at all resolutions for an extra performance boost. On that note, NVIDIA DLSS still delivers the best image quality using the 'Quality' preset at 1080p, with XeSS coming in second and FSR a somewhat distant third place. NVIDIA's DLSS 3 Frame Generation is also available in more titles, which is another factor to consider. Switching the resolution to 1440p, using 'Ultra' quality settings, the Intel Arc B580 begins to pull away from the pack thanks partly to the increased VRAM capacity. At this resolution, the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend is around 12% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 and 25% faster than the Radeon RX 7600. Again, the Radeon versus Arc blowout is mainly due to ray tracing performance. Take RT out of that equation, and the lead drops to around 10%, but it's still enough of an improvement to make the Radeon RX 7600 feel like a distant third when it comes to $300 or so mainstream GPU offerings. One game where the 12GB of VRAM is useful is Horizon Forbidden West, one of the best-looking PC games in 2024. Here, the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend is 24.5% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 and 12.9% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti. However, even at 1440p, the B580 still trails the GeForce RTX 4060 in Black Myth: Wukong and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 - and the RTX 4060 benefits from DLSS's excellent image quality and Frame Generation in these titles. When Intel announced the B580, it positioned the GPU as a 1440p 'Ultra' gaming GPU, which is true - but only to an extent. Suppose you're happy with around 60 FPS and okay with lowering a few settings here and there to hit this average. In that case, it can deliver solid 1440p performance - but the mid-range market of the GeForce RTX 4070 and Radeon RX 7800 XT is still the go-to for this resolution, especially for visually demanding titles. 3DMark offers a suite of synthetic benchmarks built to put GPUs to the test in various scenarios. 3DMark Time Spy is a DirectX 12 benchmark that has been around for a while, which tests rendering at 1440p and isn't too taxing on modern GPUs. 3DMark Steel Nomad is another DirectX 12 benchmark, but it features newer modern rendering techniques designed to push modern GPUs to their limit. The 'Light' version tests at 1440p, while the main Steel Nomad benchmark tests pure native 4K rendering. Finally, Port Royal is a benchmark focusing exclusively on real-time ray tracing for lighting effects like reflections, shadows, and more. As we saw with the first generation of Intel Arc Graphics, the new B580 delivers exceptional synthetic benchmark results that don't translate 1:1 to in-game performance. Looking at the Time Spy benchmark, the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend delivers a score that is 32% higher than the GeForce RTX 4060, 30% higher than the Radeon RX 7600, and 8% higher than the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, again, not precisely what we see when it comes to real-world PC gaming workloads. The Steel Nomad Light benchmark shows the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend delivering a score 2.5% higher than the GeForce RTX 4060 and on par with the Radeon RX 7600. In the 4K Steel Nomad benchmark, the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend outperforms the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti by 3%, which could be due to the additional VRAM capacity. With the Port Royal benchmark covering ray tracing performance, the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend delivers another impressive score. Even though it's 27.9% higher than the GeForce RTX 4060, it's still not exactly what we see in real-world gaming workloads. Compared to the Intel Arc A750, the first Arc desktop GPU to be released, the Intel Arc B580 is a clear win for Intel. The results highlight that the second-generation Xe2 architecture is vastly superior. For 1080p gaming, the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend is 32.2% faster than the A750, with that figure holding firm at 30% when bumping up the resolution to 1440p. In a way, it makes the prospect of an Intel Arc B750 launching in the coming months an exciting proposition, as it could deliver a compelling alternative to the GeForce RTX 4070 in the same way Intel has brought the fight and competition to the mainstream GPU market. When looking at the results, it's clear that the new architecture and 12GB of VRAM help position the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend as a 1080p and 1440p option for $249.99 - an MSRP that is notably $50 cheaper than the GeForce RTX 4060 and $20 more affordable than the Radeon RX 7600. However, compared to NVIDIA's mainstream GPU, the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend delivers its performance gains using up to 40% or more power. Also, as mentioned, DLSS image quality and the widespread support of DLSS 3 Frame Generation can be a factor when you look beyond raw performance. The good news is that Intel's XeSS is a viable option for 1080p and 1440p gaming. The technology is available in over 150 titles and almost all games in our benchmark suite feature XeSS support. And with the arrival of 'Battlemage,' we've got XeSS 2 and Intel's take on AI-powered frame generation, currently available in a single title - F1 24. As a racing game with hardware-intensive ray tracing, XeSS 2, with frame generation and low latency technology, increases performance by 2.3X at 1080p and 2.5X at 1440p. However, we did notice some image artifacts when benchmarking XeSS 2. Hence, the overall image quality isn't on par with DLSS 3 - which has matured into a definite selling point for the GeForce RTX 40 Series. With its exceptional cooling and thermal performance, the out-of-the-box ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend remains remarkably cool even when stressed. This leaves definite room for overclocking, which we were able to test using Intel's new software. With two 8-pin power connectors delivering more power to the GPU and control over frequencies, power, and voltage, the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend can be overclocked to provide even more performance than what you see in the individual game results above. Testing the OC performance of the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend in F1 24, we were able to boost performance by around 3-5% - which makes it a compelling alternative to Intel's reference design. Throughout our testing, we were consistently impressed by the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend's performance because the new Xe2 'Battlemage' architecture doesn't feature the same drawbacks and inconsistent performance of the first generation of Intel Arc desktop GPUs. Throw in great 1440p performance, the $250 MSRP, and 12GB of VRAM, and the ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend is a mainstream GPU equipped to handle modern titles with ray tracing and using Ultra-equivalent settings. The new Intel Graphics Software is also a welcome evolution for Arc, as it offers expanded display controls, overclocking tools, performance metrics, and the ability to customize performance profiles and settings. It's not perfect, and the app did crash a couple of times during our testing, alongside a game or two, but in a random, non-repeatable way. Overclocking also seems to have been a focus this time, making models like this something to consider. Either way, the out-of-the-box performance and cooling are superior to the reference design, and you've got the sleek all-white design suitable for modern builds. The ASRock Intel Arc B580 Steel Legend is priced right and outperforms the GeForce RTX 4060. Thanks to excellent entry-level ray tracing, it also leaves the Radeon RX 7600 in its wake. Intel Arc 2.0 is impressive and puts the pressure on NVIDIA and AMD to deliver with the eventual GeForce RTX 5060 and Radeon RX 8600.

Intel Arc B580 GPU Review - A New Mainstream PC Gaming Challenger Appears

Intel entered the discrete desktop gaming GPU market in 2022 with the arrival of the Intel Arc A750, a new mainstream graphics card designed to offer a viable alternative to the GeForce RTX 3060, which is still one of the most popular cards on the market. Without going into the launch issues, driver problems, bugs, and a long list of unplayable games, it's important to note that the Arc team at Intel has done some impressive work in turning the Arc ship around. Several meaningful driver and software updates, massive improvements to playing games running on older DirectX technology, and more. A quick look at the Intel Arc B580 From game support to stability to real-world performance, Intel Arc in 2024 is a night and day difference compared to what we saw a few years ago. Even so, the Intel Arc A750 never became a GeForce RTX 3060 killer, and in 2024, Arc Graphics drivers still have plenty of room for improvement. However, the foundation was laid for the arrival of the second generation of Arc graphics hardware and the first 'Battlemage' GPU - the Intel Arc B580. It's an arrival that feels like an Arc 2.0 moment - a reboot, a refresh. The Intel Arc B580 is a mainstream GPU with 12GB of VRAM and an attractive $249.99 USD price point. This time, Intel is bringing the fight to the GeForce RTX 4060, the RTX 3060's Frame Generation-powered successor. It is more affordable, powerful, and has enough VRAM to make it a capable 1440p gaming GPU. That's Intel's elevator pitch, so to speak, for the Intel Arc B580, which is also debuting alongside the arrival of its Frame Generation technology in the form of Intel XeSS 2 and XeSS-FG. Setting aside the fact that Intel is launching its 'Battlemage' desktop cards with the lower-tier Intel Arc B580 rather than an Intel Arc B750, the B580 more than lives up to its promise of delivering a viable alternative to the GeForce RTX 4060. It might not be the "1440p Ultra" settings GPU like the GeForce RTX 4070, but it's powerful enough to bring the fight to the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti in several games, with ray-tracing and overall performance that makes AMD's mainstream Radeon RX 7600 8GB GPU feel irrelevant. The Intel Arc B580 is worth considering and something to celebrate. It presents mainstream competition that pressures NVIDIA and AMD to deliver with the upcoming GeForce RTX 5060 and Radeon RX 8600 GPUs in 2025. It's not without flaws, but it's an exciting GPU release nonetheless. Let's dig in. Below is a summary of Intel Arc B-Series 'Battlemage' technology in the Intel Arc B580, applicable to all models. The Intel Arc B580 utilizes the company's second-generation Xe2 HPG or High-Performance Graphics architecture. Compared to NVIDIA's CUDA Cores and AMD's Compute Units, Intel's Xe and now Xe2 architecture breaks down its technology into 'Render Slices,' which contain Xe Cores, Ray Tracing Units, and dedicated Intel XMX AI hardware. These are the building blocks that make up graphics rendering in the modern era, where it's a mix of GPU hardware, AI hardware for boosting performance, and Ray Tracing hardware to process the complex calculations required to deliver genuinely stunning cinematic gaming. As expected, Intel's B-Series moves to a more efficient and cutting-edge process in the form of TSMC 5N. However, this only plays a minor role in each next-gen Xe Core, delivering up to 70% more performance with a 50% improvement in power efficiency. Intel's first-generation Xe architecture and Arc graphics products were impressively engineered, but there was room for improvement. With enhanced compatibility with graphics engines and APIs like DirectX and Vulkan, improved workload distribution, more cache, expanded AI hardware, and more than double the overall ray tracing performance, Xe2 sees the Arc team return to the drawing board to bring measurable improvements to its second-generation Arc Graphics products. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. The Intel Arc B580 features 20 Xe Cores compared to 28 Xe Cores in the first-gen Intel Arc A750, roughly a 28% reduction in overall GPU hardware. And yet, it still manages to deliver a sizeable 30% improvement in 1080p gaming performance. Arc 'Battlemage' and the Xe2 architecture have also been designed for integrated graphics, as seen in Intel's mobile Lunar Lake chips. So, it makes sense that an entry-level desktop GPU product would improve performance and efficiency. Xe2 is also forward-thinking in featuring fixed-function engines within the GPU for rasterization, ray tracing, and DirectX 12 Ultimate technologies like Variable Rate Shading, Mesh Shading, and Sampler Feedback. In developing Xe2, Intel's engineers and architects analyzed various workloads, covering all engines and rendering APIs to improve latency, performance, and efficiency. The team also focused on software and hardware interactions, with some executions improving a massive 66X compared to the first-generation Xe architecture. The Intel Arc B580 also sees the arrival of Intel XeSS 2 for all Arc devices, which combines the AI-powered XeSS Super Resolution upscaling with the brand-new XeSS-FG Frame Generation and XeSS-LL Low Latency technologies. Essentially, XeSS 2 is Intel's answer to NVIDIA's DLSS 3, which combines NVIDIA's Super Resolution technology with Frame Generation and Reflex. With AI-based super-resolution and frame interpolation, Intel's tech is closer to NVIDIA than AMD's. Currently only available in a single title, F1 24, XeSS 2 is a welcome addition to the Arc line-up, offering its version of what has become a GeForce RTX selling point. Finally, for creators, the updated Arc B-Series Media Engine features a new dual-MFX design for encoding and decoding workloads - and can handle up to 8K 10-bit HDR 120 FPS video. With support for a wide range of codecs, including AV1, H265, and HEVC 4:2:2 10-bit encoding and decoding, the Intel Arc B580 is built for media production, streaming, and content creation. The Arc B-Series Display Engine, as seen in the Intel Arc B580, supports up to four monitors at 4K120 HDR with DisplayPort 2.1 and HDMI 2.1a. The Intel Arc B580 is the first second-gen Arc desktop graphics card to launch with the new Xe2 'Battlemage' architecture. As the model name suggests, this is a direct successor to the Intel Arc A580, a cut-down entry-level Arc GPU that debuted several months after the Intel Arc A750. Yes, it's a little strange that this time around, Intel is launching its new GPU line-up with an entry-level model - but it makes sense when you factor in NVIDIA and AMD prepping to launch mid-range and high-end GPUs in early 2025. Performance-wise, the Intel Arc B580 is a notable improvement over the Intel Arc A750, making it a viable mainstream alternative to GeForce RTX. With fewer Xe Cores than the Arc A750 and Arc B580 and lower memory bandwidth than the Intel, Arc B580 is all about doing more with less; however, the power rating is close enough to the Arc A750 and A580 to suggest that the efficiency gains are somewhat off. That is until you look at the significant boost to clock speeds, with the B580 hitting a peak of 2850 MHz and increasing memory capacity to 12GB of GDDR6. The expanded VRAM capacity helps the Arc B580 handle VRAM-intensive titles at both 1080p and 1440p, like Horizon Forbidden West, to deliver exceptional performance when stacked up against 8GB GPUs like the GeForce RTX 4060, the RTX 4060 Ti, and the Radeon RX 7600. As seen above, Intel plans to launch a cut-down Intel Arc B570 in January 2025, featuring fewer Xe Cores and 10GB of VRAM. The Intel Arc B580 Limited Edition graphics card is Intel's reference model or 'Founder Edition' design. It takes the original look, feel, and cooling configuration of the original Intel Arc A-Series Limited Edition GPU design and redesigns the thermals solution and cooling for improved acoustics (i.e., silent performance) and efficiency. The physical design doesn't include any RGB lighting. Instead, you've got a 'stealth black' dual-fan setup in a compact dual-slot form factor. The cooling comprises four heat pipes with two large vertically oriented fin stacks that run the length of the GPU, with the heat exhausted from the top, bottom, and via the new cooling vent on the back. The back is where you get the GPU's Intel Arc B580 branding with a small pattern. It has an impressive, sleek, and minimalist look, and compared to the Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition GPU, it's considerably lighter - 785 grams versus 1065 grams. The matte black finish looks great, as does the visible vent on the back of the GPU. As the reference design, Intel has also improved the internal PCB with improved power delivery for the GPU and memory that supports higher speeds, 19 Gbps memory, and clock speeds. This time, Intel uses higher-quality thermal pads and materials for better heat dissipation and an easily removable backplate for repairability and disassembly. Finally, the fans offer 30% improved airflow while reducing noise levels by up to 50%. PC gaming not only covers a wide range of genres and styles, from indie games with simple 2D graphics to massive 3D worlds lit by cutting-edge real-time ray tracing technology. With that, the needs and requirements of each gamer vary. High refresh rates and latency reduction become more important than flashy visuals or playing at the highest resolution possible for those who live and breathe fast-paced competitive games. For those who want to live in a cinematic world and become a key player in an expansive narrative, high-fidelity visuals are a stepping stone toward immersion. Our chosen benchmarks cover various games, engines, APIs, and technologies. For the Intel Arc B580, all tests are run at 1080p and 1440p and include results for performance-boosting Super Resolution technologies like NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS. These technologies are becoming increasingly important, with every major release launching with one or more supported Super Resolution technologies. In many ways, DLSS numbers are more important in 2024 than native rendering - a title with ray tracing isn't meant to be played without Super Resolution. However, our benchmark results are still sorted using the 'raw performance' native rendering metric as DLSS, FSR, and XeSS are three different implementations of the same thing. Here's the breakdown of games, graphics settings, and what's being tested. With a wide range of games and genres tested, around half including some form of ray tracing, it's clear that the Intel Arc B580 is more powerful than the GeForce RTX 4060 at this resolution - however, the lead is only around 6%. Even though there are games, like Black Myth: Wukong and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, where the GeForce RTX 4060 pulls ahead, the Intel Arc B580's performance is far more consistent than that of the first-gen Arc. There are games where the B580 showcases impressive and surprising gains over the GeForce RTX 4060. Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing is 14.7% faster, and Horizon Forbidden West is 10.3% faster. The latter doesn't include ray tracing but is easily one of the best-looking games you can play in 2024. However, the Intel Arc B580 uses considerably more power than the GeForce RTX 4060, so NVIDIA's mainstream Ada GPU is still the undisputed efficiency champ - drawing as little as 100W even when stressed. The B580 is even more power-hungry than the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti and AMD's Radeon RX 7600. Regarding the Intel Arc B580 versus the Radeon RX 7600, another 12GB of VRAM versus 8GB showdown, the B580 is 15.6% faster on average due to Radeon ray-tracing performance being notably worse. In fact, with the B580's RT capabilities outshining the RTX 4060, performance-wise, as DLSS is still superior to XeSS, the Radeon RX 7600 is wholly outclassed. Bump up the resolution to 1440p, and the Intel Arc B580's lead over the GeForce RTX 4060 effectively doubles - to around 12%. One of the reasons for this can be chalked up to the increased 12GB of VRAM, and with an average XeSS-powered average of 77 FPS, the B580 can deliver solid 1440p gaming performance. At 1440p, the AI-powered XeSS (recently updated to XeSS 2) delivers impressive visual fidelity that, although not on par with the gold standard that is NVIDIA DLSS, is closer to DLSS than it is AMD's FSR. However, it's worth stating that NVIDIA has always marketed the GeForce RTX 4060 as a 1080p gaming card first and foremost. Even with the additional VRAM, the Arc B580's performance in Black Myth: Wukong and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 still falls behind that of the GeForce RTX 4060. Still, in Horizon Forbidden West, the 12GB of VRAM sees the Intel Arc B580 perform over 20% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060. This example is also faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, NVIDIA's more expensive mainstream option, pointing to the 12GB of VRAM in the Intel Arc B580, giving it an edge in specific titles. Regarding 1440p gaming, the Intel Arc B580 is 25% faster than the Radeon RX 7600 - again, a result that makes AMD's mainstream GPU look outdated in terms of its capabilities. With all benchmarks using 'Ultra' or 'Very High' equivalent settings, the Intel Arc B580's performance can be further tuned for additional performance by tweaking in-game settings without adversely affecting image quality. 3DMark offers a suite of synthetic benchmarks built to put GPUs to the test in various scenarios. 3DMark Time Spy is a DirectX 12 benchmark that has been around for a while, which tests rendering at 1440p, which isn't too taxing on modern GPUs. 3DMark Steel Nomad is another DirectX 12 benchmark, but it features newer modern rendering techniques designed to push modern GPUs to their limit. The 'Light' version tests at 1440p, while the main Steel Nomad benchmark tests pure native 4K rendering. Finally, Port Royal is a benchmark focusing exclusively on real-time ray tracing for lighting effects like reflections, shadows, and more. Intel's Arc Graphics has consistently delivered exceptional results in the Time Spy test, which wasn't reflected in actual in-game performance benchmarks. Here, the new Intel Arc B580 outperforms the Radeon RX 7600 by 30.2%, the GeForce RTX 4060 by 17%, and the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti by 8%. This isn't indicative of in-game results; however, the Steel Nomad Light and Steel Nomad results are much closer to real-world performance. The B580 falls between the RTX 4060 and the RTX 4060 Ti in the 1440p 'Light' version, but thanks to the increased VRAM capacity, it slightly outperforms the RTX 4060 Ti in the 4K test. Regarding the Port Royal benchmark, we get to see the Arc B-Series ray tracing performance in full force, which leaves the Radeon RX 7600 in its wake while comfortably outperforming the GeForce RTX 4060. As a mainstream new sub-$300 GPU, a rarity in 2024, the Intel Arc B580 offers a compelling alternative to the GeForce RTX 4060. At 1080p, the two cards trade blows, while the 12GB of VRAM ensures that it pulls ahead at 1440p, as seen in Horizon Forbidden West, where it even eclipses the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti. For pure 1080p gaming, NVIDIA's DLSS and Frame Generation have the edge regarding image quality and support - with DLSS 3 supported by a wide range of titles. Also, the RTX 4060 is a far more efficient GPU, delivering its performance using upwards of 40% less power. This means that the B580 delivers its performance advantage by utilizing much more energy, which must be factored into the overall story. However, as Intel's XeSS is AI-powered, it delivers superior image quality to AMD's FSR and is worth enabling at 1440p and 1080p using the equivalent DLSS Quality setting. At 1080p, you do sacrifice image fidelity for performance, but it's a must for titles with ray-tracing, like Cyberpunk 2077 and Dying Light 2. On the plus side, XeSS was available in all the games we tested, including DLSS and FSR. Hence, it's something developers support and will continue to do so, thanks to Intel utilizing Arc Graphics for its integrated graphics. With the Intel Arc B580, we've also got the debut of XeSS 2, which includes Intel's AI-powered frame generation technology. It's only available in a single game, F1 24, which we could test at 1080p and 1440p. With the addition of Intel's new low-latency technology, you're looking at a significant performance boost without additional input latency. At 1080p, we see a 2.3X increase in performance, while at 1440p, we see a 2.5X increase in performance. We did notice some visual artifacts with XeSS 2 Frame Generation that weren't present when using DLSS 2 Frame Generation on the RTX 4060. However, the latency and effect are impressive. Still, as it requires game implementation, we might never see a situation where there are as many games with DLSS 3 support as XeSS 2 support. The Intel Arc B580 Limited Edition is a great-looking minimal GPU that is whisper quiet even when under load, with temperatures remaining relatively cool even when stressed. As discussed, its 190W power rating is more power-hungry than the GeForce RTX 4060 and RTX 4060 Ti, with consumption being closer to the far more powerful GeForce RTX 4070. However, with partner B580 models supporting overclocking with an additional 8-pin power connector, extra performance can be obtained via the OC tools available in Intel's updated Graphics Software for Arc GPUs. From installation to benchmarking, we only encountered a single game crash. Overall, the Intel Arc B580 is impressively stable. Intel's new software also delivers more control over the Intel Arc B580 with in-depth performance metrics, expanded display controls, and a powerful overclocking suite that can improve performance. Again, it's a night and day difference compared to the first-generation Intel Arc A750 launch, with performance that makes a compelling argument for picking this up over a GeForce RTX 4060. With 12GB of VRAM, it's also better equipped for modern titles that require more memory when using Ultra-equivalent settings. It's not perfect, and the GeForce RTX 4060 benefits from NVIDIA's full suite of application support, content creation features, AI readiness, and widespread support for DLSS and DLSS 3. This will always make an alternative from Intel or AMD an uphill battle or hard sell, as familiarity and security come with choosing an established and reliably impressive brand or product. The Intel Arc B580 includes excellent encoding support for content creators and AI hardware, too, so it isn't lacking in any one area. XeSS 2 Frame Generation is also promising, but it's starting from behind and playing catch-up. This is probably why Intel landed at the $249 price point, which is $50 cheaper than the GeForce RTX 4060 MSRP and $20 cheaper than the Radeon RX 7600 MSRP. The Intel Arc B580 is a mainstream winner, a GPU that delivers competitive performance across all metrics - including ray tracing. As mentioned earlier in this review, it makes the Radeon RX 7600 irrelevant while bringing the fight to the GeForce RTX 4060. Of course, the situation could easily change when the GeForce RTX 5060 and Radeon RX 8600 hit the scene, but they could both be months from release. Right now, the Intel Arc B580 offers excellent value for its price point. The 12GB of VRAM opens the door to more 1440p gaming than its competition can handle while also adding some peace of mind that it'll be able to handle the latest releases coming down the pipe in 2025. Intel Arc 2.0 is a win - bring on the Intel Arc B750.

Intel Arc B580 Review - IGN

Intel is finally heading into its second generation of dedicated graphics cards with the Intel Arc B580. And while the company could have fallen into a trap of trying to compete with Nvidia and AMD at the high end, Team Blue instead has created one of the best budget graphics cards on the market right now. At $249, the Arc B580 is cheaper than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 and slots in right next to the Radeon RX 7600. However, because both of these cards are based on older technology, it's little wonder that Intel is able to eke out a lead. It's refreshing to see a flagship graphics card aim for the masses, rather than holding a prohibitively expensive price tag that very few can actually afford. And while there are a couple games where the Arc B580 falls short - looking at you Black Myth: Wukong - it's hard to imagine any other GPU competing at this price point any time soon. The Intel Arc B580 is built on Intel's new Xe2 graphics architecture, codenamed Battlemage. One of the biggest changes between this and the last-generation architecture that powered the Intel Arc A770 is that each Battlemage Xe core - Intel's compute unit - has fewer Vector Engines than the previous generation. In total, the Intel Arc B580 features 20 Xe Cores, each of which contains 4 Vector Engines, for a total of 160 Vector Engines, each of which has 16 shaders. That means a total of 2,560 shaders, which is a bit slimmer than the Arc A770 that preceded it. This sounds like bad news at first, but Intel has made efforts to drastically improve the per-core performance on these Vector Engines - by as much as 70 percent. And for a budget graphics card, the Arc B580 has an impressive amount of memory, featuring 12GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus. Both the AMD Radeon RX 7600 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060, at a similar price, are limited to 8GB. Of course, these graphics cards are shooting for 1080p gaming, but AAA games are continually using more memory every year, so it's nice to have a bit of buffer there. Still, the last-generation Arc A770 had 16GB of memory, though it was a more expensive part. The B580 is also clocked at 2,670MHz, with a max boost of 2,850MHz, which is a substantial increase over the 2,100MHz of the Arc A770. This is likely a huge part of why the B580 is faster than the last-generation GPU, despite having less memory and fewer cores. But more on that later. Each Vector Engine is also paired with XMX cores, Intel's AI tensor core. Intel is using these to power XeSS 2, which is an AI upscaling technology, similar to Nvidia's DLSS. The XMX will take in a lower-resolution frame, pair it with motion vector data, and use an AI algorithm to scale that up to your native resolution. It will then take information from the completed frame and feed that back into the algorithm to improve future frames. What's new for the second generation of XeSS, though, is frame generation. While XeSS 2 Frame Generation is currently limited to a single game - F1 24 - it works similarly to Frame Generation technology from AMD or Nvidia. Instead of only upscaling existing frames after they're rendered by your GPU, the XMX will create new frames in between existing frames. Not only does this mean you get a higher frame rate, but it greatly reduces the amount of time your graphics card is waiting for information from your CPU. The only downside is that frame generation technology always introduces a bit of latency to the equation. Luckily, Intel is mitigating that latency with XeSS-LL, or Low Latency, which greatly reduces the amount of time between you pressing a button and that action being represented on the display, by optimizing communication between your processor and graphics card. While there will likely be dozens of Arc B580 graphics cards from third-party manufacturers like ASRock, Intel is selling a reference design, and that's what I'm reviewing here. Although Intel is calling its reference board a 'Limited Edition', so we'll have to wait and see how common it actually is on store shelves. Hopefully a lot of people can get their hands on this card, though, because it's gorgeous. The fan shroud has a silky black finish that feels as good as it looks. The two fans are also pitch-black, with nothing in the way of branding. Flip the card over, however, and you'll see 'Intel Arc B580' printed beneath a radial display of white dots. Next to the branding, there's a cutout in the backplate that leads directly to the heatsink. It looks cool, but it also means the actual circuit board housing the GPU only takes up half the length of the graphics card, with space instead dedicated to passing air directly through the back of the graphics card. Then on the side of the GPU, the logo is printed, but when it's plugged in, the logo is lit with a white LED. It's a stunning graphics card that'll look good in any system, especially if it's paired with other black components. The B580 is powered by a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. In my testing, the card only used 154W of power, which is significantly less than the 190W its predecessor used in the same test suite. Plus, the new cooler design is much more efficient at pushing air through the B580, peaking at 82°C, compared to the 86°C of the A770 in the same workload. When Intel first showed me the Arc B580, it led with the growth that 1440p gaming monitors are having, clearly intending the B580 to punch into that resolution. Not only has Intel easily cleared its way into 1440p gaming, but at $249, this might be the best 1440p card for most people - assuming you're not spending all your time in Black Myth: Wukong. Before I jump into the results, a bit on how I test these games. In each game, I set quality settings to the highest possible preset configuration that isn't full ray tracing (sorry Cyberpunk 2077 and Black Myth: Wukong). Then, I enable upscaling through the best method available for each card. That means DLSS for Nvidia, FSR for AMD and XeSS for Intel. For games that only have DLSS, like Metro Exodus, I test without upscaling at all. Every graphics card was retested for this review using the 566.36 driver for Nvidia, Adrenalin 24.12.1 for AMD and Intel Graphics Driver 32.0.101.6319 for older Intel cards. The Arc B580 was tested on a prerelease driver. In 3DMark, the Intel Arc B580 held its own against the more expensive Nvidia RTX 4060, even beating it in Port Royal, which is a dedicated ray tracing test. That's impressive, because Nvidia has held the lead in that test since it came out, and it demonstrates Intel's ray tracing chops. Intel maintains a lead in Steel Nomad as well, scoring 3,082 points to the RTX 4060's 2,335 and the Radeon RX 7600's 2,309. However, Team Blue falls behind in Speed Way, which tests a DirectX 12 workload with ray tracing, with 2,568 points to Nvidia's 2,660. In Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, the Intel Arc B580 falls behind both Nvidia and AMD at 1080p, managing 73 fps, compared to 80 from the RTX 4060 and 87 from the Radeon RX 7600. However, in this test, no matter how many times I ran it, the B580 rendered without the gun in the player's hand, meaning the benchmark run consisted of some dude running around Lowtown shooting people with an invisible gun. Hilarious, but it probably means there's some driver issue that can be resolved later on. I couldn't reproduce this bug on Nvidia or AMD cards, but it persisted on every Intel card I tested. Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the heaviest ray tracing games on the market, even though it's been out for four years now. Throughout its history, it has always leaned towards Team Green, but the Intel Arc B580 shows its ray tracing chops here, managing 60 fps at 1440p with the Ray Tracing Ultra preset and XeSS set to Balanced, compared to 49 fps from the RTX 4060 and 29 fps from the Radeon RX 7600. In Red Dead Redemption 2, the Intel Arc B580 continued its winning streak. Now, Red Dead Redemption 2's 'presets' aren't really presets, so instead I just cranked every setting up as far as it would go and then ran the test. Still, the Arc B580 managed 87 fps at 1440p when the RTX 4060 only got 72 fps. That's a 21 percent lead with a $50 cheaper card. Then there's Total War: Warhammer 3 which has nothing in the way of ray tracing or upscaling, but with 63 fps, the Intel Arc B580 still managed to lead the Radeon RX 7600 and the RTX 4060, which scored 56 and 54 fps, respectively. However, Intel can't win all the battles, and the B580 does fall behind a bit in Assassin's Creed Mirage. Nvidia absolutely dominates in this game, with the RTX 4060 getting 126 fps at Ultra, compared to 91 fps from the Arc B580. Even the RX 7600 manages to come out ahead, with its 95 fps average. The B580 also has a weak showing in Black Myth: Wukong, scoring just 30 fps at 1440p on the "Cinematic" preset. Compared to the 35 fps from the RTX 4060, it's not a night-and-day difference, but that's still a 16 percent lead in Nvidia's favor. Nvidia and Intel even out again in Forza Horizon 5, however, with Team Blue's card managing 94 fps, compared to 92 fps from the RTX 4060 and 77 fps from the last-gen Arc A770. AMD does struggle a bit here, though, only managing 63 fps at the same settings with the RX 7600. Across my test suite, the Intel Arc B580 is an incredibly powerful graphics card at 1440p, especially when you consider its $249 price tag. Intel could have easily just matched the performance of other graphics cards on the market, but instead it soundly beats the competition, while cutting the price, giving us a budget card that doesn't suck for once. And sure, it would be nice if Intel didn't cut the VRAM from 16GB on the Arc A770 to 12GB on the B580, but it's not like the performance is suffering from it.

Intel Arc B580 review: the fastest mainstream GPU - and 12GB of VRAM is the cherry on top

The review embargo lifts today for Intel's Arc B580 graphics card - the firm's second generation GPU architecture, fully supporting hardware-accelerated machine learning and ray tracing. Intel is aiming squarely at the budget gamer with the $250 Arc B580, promising 12GB of VRAM and average performance that is, according to its own benchmarks, around 10 percent faster on average than the market leader: Nvidia's more expensive RTX 4060 8GB. A B570 is following in January, with a mild haircut to shaders, bandwidth and VRAM (10GB), with a mooted $220 price-point. We were sent the Arc B580 last week and it's an impressive piece of kit. The limited edition reference card is well-built, totally quiet in operation and requires just one PCI-e eight-pin power input, with general operation seeing power draw around 170-180W at most. Display outputs are the standard trio of DisplayPorts, backed by an HDMI 2.1 output. In common with prior Arcs, HDMI seems to have some issues with capture cards - frustrating for our workflow, but surmountable with a DisplayPort to HDMI cable. So why is there no full-blooded, multi-page Eurogamer review? Owing to some fundamental changes to our benchmarking set-up, we can't bring you our usual array of figures - a tech upgrade is needed behind the scenes on the Eurogamer CMS. However, our video workflow is functional, so I do encourage you to watch the video embedded below. You'll get some idea of why we are updating our benchmarking system in the first place (more data, more games, more holistic testing) but more importantly, you'll get to see Arc B580 in action - and it's good! Ray tracing performance is the high point in the grand battle against RTX 4060. In Alan Wake 2 at high settings with low RT (the only setting that doesn't use path tracing), you're getting reflections and transparency reflections that exceed the quality on the PS5 Pro version. At native 1080p, B580 beats RTX 4060 by 29 percent and it's 51 points clear of the RX 7600, though it does have some stutter that Nvidia does not. Dying Light 2 at the same resolution is 14 percent ahead of Nvidia, 51 points clear of AMD, while Metro Exodus on extreme settings blitzes the competition: 16 percent ahead of RTX 4060, surpassing RX 7600 with a 77 percent advantage. It's not all plain sailing for Intel - the performance gap drops in Avatar, but generally, RT is the highlight. In rasterisation, RTX 4060 is more competitive with Alan Wake 2 on high settings looking very similar to B580. RX 7600 pushes ahead, though both AMD and Intel once again exhibit stutter not seen on Nvidia cards. Meanwhile, Black Myth: Wukong actually sees Nvidia push ahead by around nine percent. The RTX 4060 is fascinating in how off-pace it is with RT disabled in Cyberpunk 2077, so it's no surprise to see B580 push ahead by 23 percent. Forza Horizon 5? It's virtually like-for-like between Intel and Nvidia, but both cards deliver benchmark performance at 1440p in excess of 60fps on the extreme setting. Do bear in mind with all of these results that the Arc B580 has that 12GB of VRAM and costs $50 less. There were some issues during testing. Intel reckons its driver issues are behind them, but I found that performance in my Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales benchmark (essentially the opening cutscene) was stuttering badly both with and without ray tracing. Cyberpunk 2077 with ultra or psycho RT also didn't work properly, hard-locking my PC. Intel says it's an issue the game has running with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, but this doesn't apply to any other GPU I tested. Here's the thing: I'm only testing a relatively small range of modern titles and if there are issues with two of them, I can't help but wonder how many more titles have issues. Legacy gaming was always a weak spot with the first generation Arc releases and while my old favourite, Assassin's Creed Unity, was patched back into the realms of good performance, Call of Duty Infinite Warfare always had issues, crashing on the first campaign level. With Arc B580, there's the same shader compilation issues (over 20 minutes to compile on Arc!) only this time I could not even start the campaign without the game crashing. All told though, Arc B580 is a dream product in many ways - this is as close to disruption as we're going to see in a mature market like PC graphics. We've been complaining for a while now about how stagnant the sub-$300 GPU market is. We've been moaning about 8GB of VRAM not being enough for a new graphics card looking to deliver console quality experiences. We've not exactly been happy about the meagre gen-on-gen performance increases offered up by RTX 4060 and RX 7600, which were adequate but in no way exciting. B580 is priced aggressively, the price vs performance ratio is best in class, ray tracing is excellent and XeSS is very, very good. I'm just concerned that support for Intel's upscaling isn't as prevalent as FSR and DLSS - for example, why isn't it supported in Alan Wake 2? XeSS 2 frame generation? In the battle to get our new benchmarking workflow online, I didn't have time to test it, but I'm looking forward to giving it a go - Intel is promising a full AI pipeline there. In the meantime though, Intel Arc B580 is a highly compelling proposition and a shot in the arm for one of the most stagnant market segments. Our prior advice for this class of product was to get an RTX 4060 if you have to, or to pick up a bargain RTX 3060 for its 12GB of framebuffer memory. Arc B580 makes the decision making process a lot more challenging. Bearing in mind where it's come from, I don't think Intel could have put out a better product. This would be a must-buy if it wasn't for how prevalent and how crucial DLSS has become. Even so, it's highly worthy of consideration.

Intel Arc B580 review

PC Gamer's got your back Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware. I dread to think how bad things would have been had Intel released this Arc B580 graphics card back in the summer. All year long we've been expecting the new Battlemage GPU architecture to arrive in a new suite of discrete Intel graphics cards, but we've had to wait until the very last minute of 2024 for the company to be able to legitimately say it hit its target of a launch this year. And where the previous generation Alchemist GPUs were notoriously unreliable in their levels of gaming performance, we were given to believe such things wouldn't be an issue with Battlemage. Indeed, from looking at the Xe2 GPU's first outing inside Lunar Lake, things did look pretty positive. In its first discrete graphics card of this Battlemage generation -- strangely the card whose Alchemist equivalent launched last -- the $250 Arc B580 is offering a hefty 12 GB frame buffer, with a healthy 192-bit bus, and a re-designed graphics core aimed at being both more familiar to game engines and to deliver on the twin modern demands of AI and ray tracing workloads. Good job, considering it's launching at a higher price than the $190 A580 did. Intel is also offering up XeSS-FG. This is its own take on Frame Generation, the interpolation technique introduced by Nvidia to magic up game frames seemingly from nowhere. And in principle it's far more like Nvidia's take on it than AMD's, using a single-model AI technique to achieve its own effects. There's more cache, more memory, improved core components, and the promise of solid, reliable drivers. All very positive. That positivity, however, has largely evaporated upon first contact with the Arc B580, its BMG-G21 GPU, and the PC Gamer graphics card test gauntlet. It's not all bad, not by a long shot, but given the state of the review drivers right now, I don't want to imagine what this launch would have looked like just a few months ago. The Intel Arc B580 was touted by its makers as a key 1440p budget GPU, and I wish I had the confidence to agree. Though the numbers I have managed to get do kinda bear that out for the most part; where it's behind the key RTX 4060 battle in terms of frame rates it's only by a relatively small margin at this relatively high resolution, and where it's ahead it's there by sometimes a fair margin, especially when you add in upscaling and frame generation. But for the new Intel graphics card to be able to get any kind of recommendation from me it had to do one thing: run consistently. You had one job, Battlemage... Just run the games we throw at you, and not flake out. Sadly, while things looked super positive from Intel's carefully picked pre-launch benchmarks, that hasn't translated into independent testing. I've heard of other reviewers having driver issues in their testing, so I know I'm not alone with the failure rate in our new GPU benchmarking suite. Consistency was always going to be key and it's just not there yet with the Arc B580. It's going to be a problem for Intel to turn this initial impression around, even with the sorts of performance bumps we saw in Alchemist drivers over the past couple years. If the issues are ironed out, however, then this $250 GPU will be a hugely tempting budget graphics card in a market where it's been tough to make a positive recommendation before. The $300 RTX 4060 is the obvious alternative, but its 8 GB VRAM has always been a stumbling block for its own 1440p frame rates. On the AMD side the similarly priced RX 7600 XT, with its 16 GB VRAM, is a far less tempting proposition. That hefty frame buffer is still hobbled by a 128-bit aggregated memory bus and RDNA 3 still struggles with ray tracing. So, it feels like there is an opportunity here if Intel can make the Arc B580's handling of PC games far more consistent. That window of opportunity might be closing rapidly if Nvidia gets anything like a budget GPU out of its Blackwell generation in the first half of 2025, though. Right now, however, it feels like too much of a lottery when for a small amount more you can buy a boring Nvidia card that will just work. The Arc B580 is the first discrete graphics card Intel has released to sport the new Battlemage, or Xe2 GPU architecture, and its BMG-G21 chip represents a necessary change from the Alchemist GPUs launched in the tail end of 2022. We've covered the architectural changes in our Lunar Lake coverage, but it does bear repeating here what Intel's switched around and why it's done so. In raw terms, the BMG-G21 looks like a lesser chip than the A580 or the A750 of the Alchemist generation, but in performance terms the B580 is actually somewhere between the $190 A580 and the $290 Arc A750. That's because Intel has made sweeping changes to its architecture to both improve efficiency and performance. And maybe to improve compatibility along the way, too. Arguably the biggest change is the switch from SIMD8 to native SIMD16 execution, something that was seen as a bit of a misstep with the original Arc GPU design. Previously there were essentially eight lanes of processing for each instruction fed to the GPU, that has been swapped out for a native 16-lane design giving a wider execution model which helps efficiency and might even give it a little fillip in terms of wider compatibility. Another mistake Intel has fessed up to is the decision to run some DirectX 12 commands entirely in software emulated states, rather than being supported by specific units within the GPU hardware itself. Intel states that its architects ran deep-dives on various workloads to see what its graphics acceleration hardware was doing, and this has led to the Xe2 GPU being far better optimised for DX12 and better utilises the hardware at its disposal. The biggest jump is the Execute Indirect command, which was one of those previously emulated in software, but is used widely by modern game engines such as Unreal Engine 5. Now it has support baked into the Xe2 hardware Intel is claiming a performance boost on that part of a frame's draw time by anywhere from 1.8x to a massive 66x faster than with Alchemist. Though apparently it averages out to around 12.5x in general. But there are a host of other small improvements in that graphics acceleration area which should all end up delivering the extra final frame rate performance that Intel is promising with Battlemage. And that is effectively a significant increase in performance per core, which is why the 20 Xe cores of the B580 are so much more effective than the 24 or 28 cores of the Arc A580 or Arc A750. Those second-gen cores will be familiar to anyone who checked out the Alchemist GPUs in any depth, but Intel has kinda smooshed things together rather than separated them out. Instead of having 16 256-bit Vector Engines in each of the cores, there are now just eight 512-bit Vector Engines. And instead of 16 1024-bit XMX Engines, there are now eight 2048-bit XMX Engines. But that native SIMD16 compute capability means there's no lack of parallelism because of the new structure and it can throw the full force of a Vector Engine's floating point units at a task if it needs to, rather than having to pull them together from separate blocks. Another reason for the improved Xe2 performance is that Intel has also bumped up the cache levels, with the first level cache being boosted by 33% to 256 KB in total, and a total of 18 MB of L2 cache, up from 16 MB in the previous generation. Ray tracing was one of the more positive parts of the Alchemist picture, and Intel has improved on its second-gen RT units again. It was a major headache for Intel to implement originally with Alchemist, but being able to build upon it for Battlemage means that Intel has a better ray tracing GPU than AMD at this point in time. Another positive has been Intel's own upscaling solution, XeSS, which is also seeing a version two with Battlemage. Though, arguably, the actual upscaling part isn't changing, just getting a slight naming change for clarity, now being known as XeSS Super Resolution in order to differentiate it from the new features of XeSS2. The key one being XeSS Frame Generation, or XeSS-FG. Nvidia kicked off the interpolation race, and true to form Intel has followed its lead rather than matching AMD's less full-force simulacrum. That's because Intel, like Nvidia, has specific matrix engines inside its GPUs rather than doing all its extra work in shaders as AMD does. The new XMX AI engines can hit both FP16 and INT8 operations, which makes them well situated to cope with the rigours of modern generative AI fun times. But they will also have a part to play in the new frame generation feature of XeSS, too, as that also has AI elements. XeSS-FG is a single AI model implementation that looks at the previous frame as well as the new frame in flight, using optical flow and motion vector reprojection algorithms, blended together to create interpolated frames. At the moment that's only available in one game, F1 24, but is certainly impressive from what I've seen. It will function in any Battlemage GPU, including those of Lunar Lake. Alongside that, and often linked for what will become obvious reasons, is XeSS Low Latency, or XeSS-LL. This is akin to Nvidia's Reflex feature and is designed to cut the PC or display latency (depending on what you want to call it) of a game. That is fundamental for fast-paced competitive games, but also vital to make the most of Intel's XeSS-FG, too. Frame interpolation always adds latency as there's another step in the process before a rendered frame is displayed, but having XeSS-LL in play will cut that back down to a more standard level. Combining all the XeSS2 features together and you get far greater performance, with both higher frame rates and lower latency. A win win. So, how does it all actually perform then when it comes down to the numbers? Intel's claims of beating out the immensely popular -- but certainly due a toppling -- RTX 4060 graphics card definitely do have some merit from our own testing, but it's absolutely not a cut and dried case of Intel dominance of the budget market. Though, were you to just take the 3DMark performance of the B580 as gospel you would have a markedly different view of the situation than you get once you actually look at it on a game-by-game basis. Intel has shown, from Alchemist onwards, how well optimised its drivers and hardware are when it comes to UL's benchmark standards. The 3DMark Time Spy Extreme performance of the Arc 580 is some 45% higher than the competing Nvidia GPU, which looks like a stellar achievement. In Port Royal, too, there's a huge gap in the ray tracing benchmark, with the Intel card having a 31% lead over the Nvidia RTX 4060. But as soon as you start talking about games, that's where things look different. In raw native resolution terms -- testing the hardware itself rather than upscaling algorithms -- it is the dictionary definition of 'a mixed bag'. In one benchmark it will sit slightly behind the Nvidia card, in another it will be slightly ahead, another still and it's well behind, and then well ahead again in further tests. This up and down performance was a feature of the Alchemist range of cards, and I was hoping it wouldn't be the case again with Battlemage. The twist here, however, is that where the A-series cards would just perform poorly, with this first B-series card I'm coming up against games that simply will not work. Cyberpunk 2077 is a particularly frustrating example, because without upscaling enabled it completely froze our test system while trying to load into the game world. Not just a crash-to-desktop, but a complete lock which required a hard reset. And it's particularly frustrating because if you look at the pseudo real-world performance -- our 1440p testing with upscaling and frame generation enabled where possible -- the Cyberpunk 2077 performance is unbelievably good. Like, almost a two-fold performance hike over the RTX 4060 with the RT Ultra preset enabled at 1440p. It's a battering of, well, more than 3DMark proportions. Then I had Homeworld 3 refusing to run in DX12 mode, and then performing really poorly in the DX11 mode I had to enable just to get some B580 numbers for the game. There are glimpses, however, of where the Battlemage hardware, with all its architectural improvements, is making a big difference in terms of how it performs in games. And when you take into account the difference XeSS-FG makes in F1 24 it does lead me to feel more positive about how this card could end up in the future. The fact that, even with the RTX 4060 using its own Frame Gen feature, the B580 gets over 50% higher frame rates, and looks damned good while doing it, is testament to what Intel has done with the feature. It's also notable that even when there are performance disparities on the negative side for the Arc B580, that chonk 12 GB frame buffer really helps shrink the gap when you start looking at higher resolutions. When it comes to the system-level performance of the card, too, it's a positive story. The card itself looks great, stays impressively cool, and even without messing around in the BIOS and Windows extra power profiling its a relatively efficient GPU, too. The performance per watt levels are up there with Nvidia's efficient Ada architecture, despite being a much bigger chip. PC Gamer test rig CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D | Motherboard: Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master | RAM: G.Skill 32 GB DDR5-6000 CAS 30 | Cooler: Corsair H170i Elite Capellix | SSD: 2 TB Crucial T700 | PSU: Seasonic Prime TX 1600W | Case: DimasTech Mini V2 There are few things as disappointing as wasted potential. And maybe it's too harsh to slap that tag onto the new Intel Arc B580 graphics card only a day out from its eventual public release, but in my time testing the new Battlemage discrete GPU that's the overriding feeling I'm left with: Disappointment. Though, the sucker that I am, it is still tinged with hope for the future. By the way, I get it. I shouldn't be talking about feelings as someone who purports to be a serious hardware journalist, especially not as to how they pertain to a fresh lump of silicon and circuitry. But I so wanted this new generation of Intel graphics architecture to be a tangible improvement from Alchemist, and there are glimpses of the true promise of the new Battlemage architecture here, shrouded as they are in the now-familiar veil of consistently inconsistent software drivers. The fact we're still talking in those terms about Intel's second generation of discrete graphics cards is so disappointing when we were promised its drivers suffered from "no known issues of any kind." For what it's worth, even just looking at the release notes for the first Arc B580 driver I installed when I started my testing, it's pretty clear there absolutely are "known issues." But it's not the total train wreck I was preparing for after my first few benchmarks in our new GPU testing suite. It was maybe unlucky that where I started my testing also just happened to be where there are serious points of failure with the new GPU. Performance picked up with later tests, and I've been impressed with XeSS Frame Generation for the little I've seen of it in the only game supporting the new feature, but the early going was rough. I was initially interested in seeing what the 12 GB of VRAM would mean for creator applications, and it slapped in the Procyon GenAI benchmark compared with the RTX 4060, which will be its major competition at this level. But shifting on to the PugetBench for DaVinci Resolve tests and I get my first failure... not at any particular point, but every time I've tried the benchmark (after subsequent updated driver releases just days before launch) it falls over at some point in the process. Then I started at the beginning of the alphabet in our gaming test suite. Black Myth Wukong works, but delivers gaming performance behind the RTX 4060 it's supposed to be topping by an average 10%. Then there's Cyberpunk 2077 and the game cannot even load into the world unless you enable some form of upscaling. Cyberpunk 2077, by the way, does deliver a significant performance boost over the RTX 4060 when you're pitting DLSS and Frame Generation vs. the Intel card utlising AMD's GPU agnostic equivalent features. So, at least there's that. A subsequent successful game bench is then followed by a total catastrophic collapse with Homeworld 3 and it crashing before the first splash screen. After a back and forth with Intel's PR I could then bench the game in the DX11 mode by using a command line argument on boot, but that just delivered performance well off the budget competition. You'll be relieved to discover I'm going to abandon the benchmark blow-by-blow now, but I just want to show how inconsistent the testing process has been. Maybe I've just been unlucky and have somehow devised the perfect suite of gaming benchmarks to hit the only problems the new Arc B580 GPU has, and you might also suggest that if only three out of 11 specific tests have failed it's not that bad. But those are infinitely more problems than you'll have than if you spend another $40 on the mature Nvidia GPU. And therein lies the rub; how do you recommend someone who's not a total contrarian spend their cash on an inconsistent graphics card? If it were merely a case of the card not performing as well in some games and easily out-pacing the competition in others that wouldn't be such an issue, I'd take the cost savings and enjoy the hell out of a great new budget GPU. But it's not, it's a case of not knowing whether the card will even boot a given game. For the short time I've been given to test the card ahead of launch and ahead of the holiday season, I've not had the chance to just chuck a ton of different games at the Arc B580 to see how widespread these failures are. But my anecdotal evidence isn't painting a particularly positive picture. This isn't the end for the Battlemage graphics card, however, as bad as it might seem on day one. Intel has shown with Alchemist that it is capable of shoring things up down the line with subsequent driver releases, and I'm told fixes for both my Cyberpunk 2077 and Homeworld 3 issues are in-hand as I type. So Intel could be again borrowing some of AMD's classic 'fine wine' ethos, where the struggling cards at launch are slowly transformed into functioning members of gaming society by fresh software. Certainly the outstanding performance in Cyberpunk 2077 with upscaling enabled gives me hope, as does the exceptional F1 24 results, too. And, if that does happen across the board, my own testing figures do show a card that has the potential to be a real budget champion if it can nail that consistent performance across a wide range of titles. Right now, though, it's a struggle to make it a confident recommendation as a buy now GPU.