Intel Arc B580 review: A spectacular success for Intel and a gateway to 1440p for gamers on a budget

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Intel Arc B580: Two-minute review

When I reviewed the Arc A770 and A750, I said that these Alchemist GPUs were impressive first efforts for Intel's Arc range, but not yet at the level that they needed to be to compete with the likes of Nvidia and AMD in discrete graphics.

Well, with the release of the new Intel Arc B580 (2nd-gen Battlemage), there's no doubt that Intel has produced one of the best graphics cards of this generation, and given gamers on a budget an absolute gift just in time for the holidays.

For starters, let's talk about the price of this GPU. At just $249.99 / £249.99 / AU$439, the Arc B580 undercuts both Nvidia's and AMD's budget offerings, the RTX 4060 and RX 7600, while offering substantially better performance, making its value proposition untouchable at this price range.

While I'll dig deeper into the performance in a bit, I'll cut to the chase and point out the simple fact that neither the RTX 4060 nor the RX 7600 can game at 1440p without severely compromising graphics quality. Not only can the B580 perform this feat, it does so brilliantly.

This comes down to some very straightforward spec choices that Intel made with its Battlemage debut that, especially in hindsight, make Nvidia and AMD's respective decisions even more baffling. First, with a VRAM pool of 12GB, the B580 can hold the larger texture files needed for 1440p gaming, whereas the RTX 4060 Ti cannot, due to its 8GB VRAM loadout.

Then there's the B580's wider 192-bit memory interface, compared to the RTX 4060 Ti's and RX 7600 XT's 128-bit. While this might seem like an obscure spec, it's the secret sauce for the B580. This beefier interface allows it to process those larger texture files much faster than its competitors, so this GPU can fully leverage its bigger VRAM pool in a way that Nvidia and AMD's competing cards simply can't, even with larger VRAM configurations.

Boiling all this down, you end up with a budget-class GPU that can get you fast 1440p framerates the likes of which we haven't seen since the RTX 3060 Ti.

Even more impressive, in my mind, is that I did not encounter a single game where there was some kind of quirk or hiccup caused by the driver. With the Arc Alchemist cards last year, there were issues with some games not running well because of inadequate driver support, or a game's reliance on an older version of DirectX that the Alchemist GPUs weren't optimized for. I didn't encounter any of those problems this time around. The Intel graphics team's long, hard work on getting Arc's drivers up to par has definitely paid off.

If there's a criticism I can make of this graphics card, it's that its creative performance isn't as good as Nvidia's. But given the entire creative world's reliance on Nvidia's bespoke CUDA instruction set, neither Intel nor AMD were ever really going to be able to compete here.

Fortunately, the Intel Arc B580 is a graphics card for gaming, and for any gamer looking to play at 1440p resolution on the cheap, the B580 is really the only graphics card that can do it, making it the only GPU you should be considering at this price point.

Intel Arc B580: Price & availability

The Intel Arc B580 is available in the US, UK, and Australia, and has been from December 13, 2024, starting at $249.99, £249.99, and AU$439 respectively. Third-party graphics card partners like Acer, ASRock, and others will have their own variants of the B580, and their prices may be higher, depending on the card.

The closest competition for the Arc B580 in terms of price are the Nvidia RTX 4060 and AMD RX 7600, both of which have a $20-$50 higher MSRP. And while Nvidia and AMD are preparing to roll out their next-gen graphics cards starting next month, it will still be a few months after the initial flagship launches before either company's budget offerings are announced. So, the B580 is the only current-gen GPU available for under $250 / £250 / AU$450 at the moment, and will likely remain so for many months to come.

• Value: 5/5

Intel Arc B580: Specifications

Intel Arc B580: Architecture & features

The Intel Arc B580 is the first discrete GPU from Intel based on its new Xe2 graphics architecture, codenamed Battlemage, and there are a lot of low-level changes over the previous-gen Intel Arc Alchemist. Many of these are small tweaks to the architectural design, such as the move from SIMD32 to SIMD16 instructions, but when taken together, all of these small changes add up to a major overhaul of the GPU.

That, in addition to using TSMC's 5nm process, means that even though the GPU itself has become physically smaller in just about every measure, it's much more powerful.

The B580 has a roughly 17% reduction in compute units from the Arc A580 and about 10% fewer transistors, but Intel says that its various architectural changes produce about 70% better performance per compute unit (or Xe core, as Intel calls it). I haven't tested or reviewed the Intel Arc A580, so I can't say for certain if that claim holds up, but there has definitely been a major performance gain gen-on-gen based on my experience with the higher-end Arc Alchemist cards. We also can't ignore the substantially faster boost clock of 2,850MHz, up from 1,700MHz for the A580.

Outside of the GPU architecture, there is also a smaller memory bus, with the A580's 256-bit interface dropping down to 192-bit for the B580, but the B580 features a 50% increase in its video memory pool, as well as a faster memory clock.

• Specs & features: 4.5 / 5

Intel Arc B580: Design

The Intel Arc B580 Limited Edition reference card is what you'd call the 'base' version of this GPU, but don't call it basic.

Despite its all-black-with-white-accent-lettering appearance, this is a good-looking graphics card, much like the initial Arc Alchemist GPUs before it, thanks to its matte, textured black shroud, dual-fan cooling, and rather understated aesthetic.

In a PC component world full of ostentatious, overly aggressive and flashy designs, there is something almost respectable about a graphics card in 2024 that presents itself without gimmicks, almost daring you to underestimate its capabilities due to its lack of RGB.

That said, there is one noticeable difference with this graphics card's design: the open 'window' over the internal heatsink to help with airflow and cooling. Unfortunately, the HWInfo64 utility I use to measure temperature and power draw for the GPUs I review couldn't read the Arc B580 during testing, so I can't tell you how much of a difference this window makes compared to something like the Intel Arc A750—but it certainly won't hurt its thermals.

Beyond that, the card also sports a single 8-pin power connector, in keeping with its 190W TBP, so you can pretty much guarantee that if you already have a discrete GPU in your system, you'll have the available power cables from your PSU required to use this GPU.

It's also not a very large graphics card, though it is larger than some RTX 4060 and RX 7600 GPUs (it's about 10.7-inches / 272mm), though third-party variants might be more compact. In any case, it's a dual-slot card, so it'll fit in place as an upgrade for just about any graphics card you have in your PC currently.

• Design: 4.5 / 5

Intel Arc B580: Performance

OK, so now we come to why I am absolutely in love with this graphics card: performance.

Unfortunately, I don't have an Intel Arc A580 card on hand to compare this GPU to, so I can't directly measure how the B580 stacks up to its predecessor. But I can compare the B580 to its current competition, as well as the Intel Arc A750, which prior to this release was selling at, or somewhat below, the price of this graphics card, and has comparable specs.

In terms of pure synthetic performance, the Arc B580 comes in second to the Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti, performing about 10% slower overall. That said, there were some tests, like 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra, Wild Life Extreme (and Wild Life Extreme Unlimited), and Time Spy Extreme where the extra VRAM allowed the Arc B580 to pull ahead of the much more expensive Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti. The Arc B580 did manage to outperform the RTX 4060 by about 12%, however.

Creative workloads aren't the Arc B580's strongest area, with Nvidia's RTX 4060 and RTX 4060 Ti performing substantially better. This might change once PugetBench for Creators Photoshop benchmark gets updated however, as it crashed during every single test I ran, regardless of which graphics card I was using.

Notably, the Intel Arc B580 encoded 4K video to 1080p at a faster rate using Intel's H.264 codec in Handbrake 1.61 than all of the other cards tested using Nvidia or AMD's H.264 options, so this is something for game streamers to consider if they're looking for a card to process their video on the fly.

But what really matters with this GPU is gaming, and if you compare this graphics card's 1080p performance to the competition, you'll have to go with the nearly 40% more expensive Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti in order to beat it, and it's not a crushing defeat for Intel. While I found the Arc B580 is about 17% slower than the RTX 4060 Ti on average at 1080p (with no ray tracing or upscaling), it's still hitting 82 FPS on average overall and actually has a slightly higher minimum/1% FPS performance of just under 60 FPS.

The AMD RX 7600 XT, Intel Arc A750, and Nvidia RTX 4060 don't even come close to reaching these kinds of numbers, with the Arc B580 scoring a roughly 30% faster average 1080p FPS and an incredible 52% faster minimum/1% FPS advantage over the Nvidia RTX 4060, which comes in a very distant third place among the five GPUs being tested. All in all, it's an impressive performance from the Intel Battlemage graphics card.

Also worth noting is that the Intel Arc B580's ray-tracing performance is noticeably better than AMD's, and not that far behind Nvidia's, though its upscaling performance lags a bit behind AMD and Nvidia at 1080p.

Even more impressive, though, is this card's 1440p performance.

Typically, if you're going to buy any 1440p GPU, not even the best 1440p graphics card, you should expect to pay at least $400-$500 (about £320-£400 / AU$600-AU$750). And to really qualify as a 1440p GPU, you need to hit an average of 60 FPS overall, with an average FPS floor of about 40 FPS. Anything less than that, and you're going to have an uneven experience game-to-game.

In this regard, the only two graphics cards I tested that qualify are the Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti and the Intel Arc B580, and they are very close to each other in terms of 1440p performance. (I can give an honorable mention to the Nvidia RTX 4060, which almost got there, but not quite).

While Nvidia has certain built-in advantages owing to its status as the premiere GPU brand (so pretty much any game is optimized for Nvidia hardware by default), at 1440p it only barely ekes out a win over the Intel Arc B580. And that's ultimately down to its stronger native ray-tracing performance—a scenario which pretty much no one opts for. If you're going to use ray tracing, you're going to use upscaling, and in that situation, the RTX 4060 Ti and Arc B580 are effectively tied at 1440p.

And this 1440p performance in particular is why I'm so enthusiastic about this graphics card. While this is the performance section of the review, I can't help but talk about the value that this card represents for gamers—especially the growing number of 1440p-aspiring gamers out there.

Prior to the Intel Arc B580, gaming at 1440p—which is the PC gaming sweet spot; believe me, I've extensively tested nearly every GPU of the past four years at 1440p—was something reserved for the petit bourgeois of PC gamers. These are the folks not rich enough to really go in for the best 4K graphics cards, but they've got enough money to buy a 1440p monitor and a graphics card powerful enough to drive it.

This used to mean something approaching a grand just for these two items alone, locking a lot of gamers into incremental 1080p advances for two successive generations. No more.

Now, with an entry-level 1440p monitor coming in under $300 /£300 / AU$450, it's entirely possible to upgrade your rig for 1440p gaming for about $500 / £500 / AU$750 with this specific graphics card (and only this graphics card), which is absolutely doable for a hell of a lot of gamers out there who are still languishing at 1080p.

Ultimately, this, more than anything, raises the Intel Arc B580 into S-Tier for me, even though Nvidia's $399.99 RTX 4060 Ti GPU gets slightly better performance. The Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti just doesn't offer this kind of value for the vast majority of gamers out there, and even with its improved performance since its launch, the 4060 Ti is still very hard to recommend.

The Nvidia RTX 4060, meanwhile, can't keep up with the B580 despite being 20% more expensive. And with the AMD RX 7600 XT, laden with its $329.99 MSRP (about £250 / AU$480 RRP), falling noticeably behind the B580, the RX 7600 (which I haven't had a chance to retest yet) doesn't stand a chance (and has a slightly more expensive MSRP).

And, it has to be emphasized, I experienced none of the driver issues with the Intel Arc B580 that I did when I originally reviewed the Intel Arc A750 and Arc A770. Every game I tested ran perfectly well, even if something like Black Myth Wukong ran much better on the two Nvidia cards than it did on Intel's GPUs. Tweak some settings and you'll be good to go.

This was something that just wasn't the case with the previous-gen Arc graphics cards at launch, and it truly held Intel back at the time. In one of my Intel Arc Alchemist reviews, I compared that generation of graphics cards to fantastic journeyman efforts that were good, but maybe not ready to be put out on the show floor. No more. Intel has absolutely graduated to full GPU maker status, and has done so with a card more affordable than the cheapest graphics cards its competition has to offer.

Simply put, for a lot of cash-strapped gamers out there, the Intel Arc B580's performance at this price is nothing short of a miracle, and it makes me question how Intel of all companies was able to pull this off while AMD and Nvidia have not.

Even if you don't buy an Intel Arc B580, give Intel its due for introducing this kind of competition into the graphics card market. If Intel can keep this up for the B570, and hopefully the B770 and B750, then Nvidia and AMD will have no choice but to rein in their price inflation with the next-gen cards they plan to offer next year, making it a win-win for every gamer looking to upgrade.

• Performance: 4.5 / 5

Intel Arc B580: Should you buy it?

Buy the Intel Arc B580 if...

Don't buy it if...

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How I tested the Intel Arc B580

• I tested the Intel Arc B580 for about three weeks
• I used my updated suite of graphics card benchmark tests
• I used the Arc B580 as my primary work GPU for creative workloads like Adobe Photoshop, as well as some in-depth game testing

Over the course of about three weeks, I used the Intel Arc B580 as my primary workstation GPU when I wasn't actively benchmarking it.

This included using the graphics card for various creative workloads like Adobe Photoshop and light video encoding work.

I also used the B580 for some in-depth game testing, including titles like Black Myth Wukong, Satisfactory, and other recently released games.

I've been doing graphics card reviews for TechRadar for more than two years now, and I've done extensive GPU testing previous to that on a personal basis as a lifelong PC gamer. In addition, my computer science coursework for my Master's degree utilized GPUs very heavily for machine learning and other computational workloads, and as a result, I know my way around every aspect of a GPU. As such, you can rest assured that my testing process is both thorough and sound.

• Originally reviewed December 2024