Intel is lastly heading into its second era of devoted graphics playing cards with the Intel Arc B580. And whereas the corporate may have fallen right into a entice of making an attempt to compete with Nvidia and AMD on the excessive finish, Team Blue as a substitute has created among the best price range graphics playing cards in the marketplace proper now. At $249, the Arc B580 is cheaper than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 and slots in proper subsequent to the Radeon RX 7600. However, as a result of each of those playing cards are based mostly on older know-how, it’s little marvel that Intel is ready to eke out a lead.
It’s refreshing to see a flagship graphics card goal for the plenty, moderately than holding a prohibitively costly price ticket that only a few can really afford. And whereas there are a pair video games the place the Arc B580 falls brief – you Black Myth: Wukong – it is exhausting to think about some other GPU competing at this value level any time quickly.
Specs and Design
The Intel Arc B580 is constructed on Intel’s new Xe2 graphics structure, codenamed Battlemage. One of the largest adjustments between this and the last-generation structure that powered the Intel Arc A770 is that every Battlemage Xe core – Intel’s compute unit – has fewer Vector Engines than the earlier era.
In complete, the Intel Arc B580 options 20 Xe Cores, every of which incorporates 4 Vector Engines, for a complete of 160 Vector Engines, every of which has 16 shaders. That means a complete of two,560 shaders, which is a bit slimmer than the Arc A770 that preceded it. This appears like dangerous information at first, however Intel has made efforts to drastically enhance the per-core efficiency on these Vector Engines – by as a lot as 70 p.c.
And for a price range graphics card, the Arc B580 has a formidable quantity of reminiscence, that includes 12GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus. Both the AMD Radeon RX 7600 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060, at an identical value, are restricted to 8GB. Of course, these graphics playing cards are taking pictures for 1080p gaming, however AAA video games are regularly utilizing extra reminiscence yearly, so it’s good to have a little bit of buffer there. Still, the last-generation Arc A770 had 16GB of reminiscence, although it was a dearer half.
The B580 can also be clocked at 2,670MHz, with a max increase of two,850MHz, which is a considerable enhance over the two,100MHz of the Arc A770. This is probably going an enormous a part of why the B580 is quicker than the last-generation GPU, regardless of having much less reminiscence and fewer cores. But extra on that later.
Each Vector Engine can also be paired with XMX cores, Intel’s AI tensor core. Intel is utilizing these to energy XeSS 2, which is an AI upscaling know-how, just like Nvidia’s DLSS. The XMX will absorb a lower-resolution body, pair it with movement vector information, and use an AI algorithm to scale that as much as your native decision. It will then take info from the finished body and feed that again into the algorithm to enhance future frames. What’s new for the second era of XeSS, although, is body era.
While XeSS 2 Frame Generation is at the moment restricted to a single sport – F1 24 – it really works equally to Frame Generation know-how from AMD or Nvidia. Instead of solely upscaling present frames after they’re rendered by your GPU, the XMX will create new frames in between present frames. Not solely does this imply you get the next body fee, but it surely significantly reduces the period of time your graphics card is ready for info out of your CPU. The solely draw back is that body era know-how at all times introduces a little bit of latency to the equation. Luckily, Intel is mitigating that latency with XeSS-LL, or Low Latency, which significantly reduces the period of time between you urgent a button and that motion being represented on the show, by optimizing communication between your processor and graphics card.
While there’ll seemingly be dozens of Arc B580 graphics playing cards from third-party producers like ASRock, Intel is promoting a reference design, and that’s what I’m reviewing right here. Although Intel is calling its reference board a ‘Limited Edition’, so we’ll have to attend and see how frequent it really is on retailer cabinets. Hopefully lots of people can get their palms on this card, although, as a result of it’s beautiful. The fan shroud has a silky black end that feels pretty much as good because it seems to be. The two followers are additionally pitch-black, with nothing in the best way of branding.
Flip the cardboard over, nevertheless, and also you’ll see ‘Intel Arc B580’ printed beneath a radial show of white dots. Next to the branding, there’s a cutout within the backplate that leads on to the heatsink. It seems to be cool, but it surely additionally means the precise circuit board housing the GPU solely takes up half the size of the graphics card, with house as a substitute devoted to passing air straight by the again of the graphics card. Then on the aspect of the GPU, the emblem is printed, however when it’s plugged in, the emblem is lit with a white LED. It’s a surprising graphics card that’ll look good in any system, particularly if it’s paired with different black parts.
The B580 is powered by a single 8-pin PCIe energy connector. In my testing, the cardboard solely used 154W of energy, which is considerably lower than the 190W its predecessor utilized in the identical take a look at suite. Plus, the brand new cooler design is rather more environment friendly at pushing air by the B580, peaking at 82°C, in comparison with the 86°C of the A770 in the identical workload.
Performance
When Intel first confirmed me the Arc B580, it led with the expansion that 1440p gaming screens are having, clearly intending the B580 to punch into that decision. Not solely has Intel simply cleared its means into 1440p gaming, however at $249, this may be the perfect 1440p card for most individuals – assuming you’re not spending all of your time in Black Myth: Wukong.
Before I soar into the outcomes, a bit on how I take a look at these video games. In every sport, I set high quality settings to the best doable preset configuration that isn’t full ray tracing (sorry Cyberpunk 2077 and Black Myth: Wukong). Then, I allow upscaling by the perfect methodology obtainable for every card. That means DLSS for Nvidia, FSR for AMD and XeSS for Intel. For video games that solely have DLSS, like Metro Exodus, I take a look at with out upscaling in any respect. Every graphics card was retested for this overview utilizing the 566.36 driver for Nvidia, Adrenalin 24.12.1 for AMD and Intel Graphics Driver 32.0.101.6319 for older Intel playing cards. The Arc B580 was examined on a prerelease driver.
In 3DMark, the Intel Arc B580 held its personal in opposition to the dearer Nvidia RTX 4060, even beating it in Port Royal, which is a devoted ray tracing take a look at. That’s spectacular, as a result of Nvidia has held the lead in that take a look at because it got here out, and it demonstrates Intel’s ray tracing chops. Intel maintains a lead in Steel Nomad as effectively, scoring 3,082 factors to the RTX 4060’s 2,335 and the Radeon RX 7600’s 2,309. However, Team Blue falls behind in Speed Way, which assessments a DirectX 12 workload with ray tracing, with 2,568 factors to Nvidia’s 2,660.
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In Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, the Intel Arc B580 falls behind each Nvidia and AMD at 1080p, managing 73 fps, in comparison with 80 from the RTX 4060 and 87 from the Radeon RX 7600. However, on this take a look at, regardless of what number of instances I ran it, the B580 rendered with out the gun within the participant’s hand, which means the benchmark run consisted of some dude working round Lowtown taking pictures folks with an invisible gun. Hilarious, but it surely in all probability means there’s some driver difficulty that may be resolved afterward. I couldn’t reproduce this bug on Nvidia or AMD playing cards, but it surely persevered on each Intel card I examined.
Cyberpunk 2077 is likely one of the heaviest ray tracing video games in the marketplace, regardless that it’s been out for 4 years now. Throughout its historical past, it has at all times leaned in direction of Team Green, however the Intel Arc B580 reveals its ray tracing chops right here, managing 60 fps at 1440p with the Ray Tracing Ultra preset and XeSS set to Balanced, in comparison with 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 profitable streak. Now, Red Dead Redemption 2’s ‘presets’ aren’t actually presets, so as a substitute I simply cranked each organising so far as it could go after which ran the take a look at. Still, the Arc B580 managed 87 fps at 1440p when the RTX 4060 solely received 72 fps. That’s a 21 p.c lead with a $50 cheaper card.
Then there’s Total War: Warhammer 3 which has nothing in the best way of ray tracing or upscaling, however with 63 fps, the Intel Arc B580 nonetheless managed to steer the Radeon RX 7600 and the RTX 4060, which scored 56 and 54 fps, respectively.
However, Intel can’t win all of the battles, and the B580 does fall behind a bit in Assassin’s Creed Mirage. Nvidia completely dominates on this sport, with the RTX 4060 getting 126 fps at Ultra, in comparison with 91 fps from the Arc B580. Even the RX 7600 manages to return out forward, with its 95 fps common.
The B580 additionally has a weak exhibiting in Black Myth: Wukong, scoring simply 30 fps at 1440p on the “Cinematic” preset. Compared to the 35 fps from the RTX 4060, it’s not a night-and-day distinction, however that’s nonetheless a 16 p.c lead in Nvidia’s favor.
Nvidia and Intel even out once more in Forza Horizon 5, nevertheless, with Team Blue’s card managing 94 fps, in comparison with 92 fps from the RTX 4060 and 77 fps from the last-gen Arc A770. AMD does wrestle a bit right here, although, solely managing 63 fps on the identical settings with the RX 7600.
Across my take a look at suite, the Intel Arc B580 is an extremely highly effective graphics card at 1440p, particularly when you think about its $249 price ticket. Intel may have simply simply matched the efficiency of different graphics playing cards in the marketplace, however as a substitute it soundly beats the competitors, whereas reducing the value, giving us a price range card that doesn’t suck for as soon as. And positive, it could be good if Intel didn’t reduce the VRAM from 16GB on the Arc A770 to 12GB on the B580, but it surely’s not just like the efficiency is affected by it.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC parts queen. You can observe her @Jackiecobra
