Intel simply revealed the complete specs of its new gaming GPUs, and is making some daring claims about them. Particularly, the corporate says its new $249 Intel Arc B580 Battlemage graphics playing cards are on common 10% sooner than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 in case you’re enjoying at 2,560 x 1,440. Not solely that, however Intel says the B580 even outperforms the RTX 4060 when ray tracing is enabled.
If that does certainly turn into true, then Intel might nicely have the very best graphics card for price range patrons on its fingers. Nvidia has left the sub-$250 graphics card market alone on the desktop not too long ago, with the $299 GeForce RTX 4060 being its least expensive providing in its current-gen lineup. In the meantime, our AMD Radeon RX 7600 assessment confirmed this $269 GPU outperforming the RTX 4060 in most traditional gaming assessments, however falling behind in the case of ray tracing. If Intel’s claims are to be believed then it has made a sub-$250 GPU that may do all of it.
Intel Arc B580 specs
| Arc B580 | Arc B570 | |
| Render slices | 5 | 5 |
| Xe cores | 20 | 18 |
| RT cores | 20 | 18 |
| XMX AI cores | 160 | 144 |
| Clock velocity | 2,670MHz | 2,500MHz |
| Reminiscence interface | 192-bit | 160-bit |
| VRAM | 12GB GDDR6 | 10GB GDDR6 |
| Energy connector | 1 x 8-pin | 1 x 8-pin |
| Interface | 8x PCIe 4.0 | 8x PCIe 4.0 |
| Whole board energy | 190W | 150W |
Ray tracing is likely one of the areas the place Intel has targeted its efforts for Battlemage (that’s the codename for the structure utilized by these GPUs), with the brand new ray tracing items within the GPUs that includes three traversal pipelines reasonably than simply two, as within the earlier Alchemist items, in addition to two triangle intersection items, reasonably than only one within the earlier GPU structure.
In the meantime, the remainder of the BMG-G21 GPU on which the B580 and B570 are primarily based is split into 5 render slices, which is Intel’s GPU constructing block. Every of those render slices incorporates 4 Xe2 cores and 4 ray tracing items, and every Xe2 core is additional divided into eight XMX cores for AI (a bit like Nvidia’s Tensor cores), and eight XVE (vector engine) cores for shader processing.
Intel says the brand new Xe2 render slices supply a “vital improve in efficiency per core” in comparison with its earlier GPU structure, and the corporate additionally claims this new GPU is focused at 1440p gaming, reasonably than the 1080p decision often focused by price range GPUs.
To this finish, it additionally comes with 12GB of GDDR6 VRAM, reasonably than the 8GB discovered on the RTX 4060 and Radeon RX 7600, and it’s connected to a 192-bit reminiscence interface, giving it a complete reminiscence bandwidth of 456GB/s. That’s considerably wider than the 272GB/s of bandwidth provided by the RTX 4060 with its 128-bit interface.
Not like Nvidia, Intel can be selecting to stay with the basic 8-pin PCIe energy connector (simply one among them) for the B580, quoting a complete board energy of 190W for inventory velocity playing cards. As well as, Intel has additionally introduced the Arc B570, which has 10GB of VRAM and a 160-bit reminiscence interface, together with 18 RT cores, 144 XMX cores, and a 2,500MHz GPU clock.
Intel XeSS 2 body era
These aforementioned XMX AI cores are going to get some use in some video games too, because of the introduction of Intel’s new XeSS 2 tech. Very similar to Nvidia DLSS 3, XeSS 2 sees Intel introducing its personal body era system, known as XeSS-FG, which can use AI to insert new frames between those rendered by the GPU, smoothing out the body charge.
A handful of video games will assist the brand new XeSS 2 body era tech at launch, together with F1 24, Murderer’s Creed Shadows, Quidditch Champions, and Robocop Rogue Metropolis. Nonetheless, Intel additionally factors to its XeSS upscaling tech now being supported in over 150 video games, and it’s doable that XeSS 2 body era might find yourself being supported by many extra video games sooner or later.
Intel Arc B580 efficiency
The massive query, in fact, is how the Arc B580 will carry out, and Intel is making some massive claims. For a begin, the corporate says the brand new GPU is on common 24% sooner than Intel’s earlier Arc A750 Restricted Version, a card that launched at a value of $289.
Maybe extra importantly, although, in response to Intel’s figures, the B580 beats each the RTX 4060 and Radeon RX 7600 in video games utilizing rasterization with out the addition of ray tracing. The truth is, Intel says that, throughout 47 video games at 2,560 x 1,440 with Extremely settings, the Arc B580 is on common 10% faster than the RTX 4060.
Not solely that, however Intel additionally says the B580 can beat the RTX 4060 at ray tracing, which is the one space the place the Radeon RX 7600 struggles. Intel provides an instance of Forza Motorsport, the place on the excessive ray tracing preset, the B580 averages 64fps in comparison with 57fps on the RTX 4060, whereas on the extremely ray tracing preset, the B580’s 51fps common towers over the RTX 4060’s 31fps, because of its further reminiscence. Intel has additionally produced a graph displaying the efficiency relative to cost.
If the $299 RTX 4060 is the 100% baseline for ray tracing efficiency, then in response to Intel’s figures from 9 ray-traced video games, the $249 Arc B580 determine is 125%, whereas the $269 Radeon RX 7600 is 88%. This can be a little bit of a tortuous graph to know, although, and at first look it makes it look as if the Arc B580 is 25% faster than the RTX 4060.
It’s additionally price allowing for that Intel’s figures come from benchmarks run at 2,560 x 1,440, the place the 8GB RTX 4060 doesn’t carry out at its greatest, and the additional VRAM provides the brand new Intel GPU a bonus. We’d have an interest to see a few of these benchmark figures at 1,920 x 1,080.
Intel Arc B580 value
The Intel Arc B580 value is $249, undercutting each the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 and AMD Radeon RX 7600, which appears to be like like good worth if the efficiency delivers on Intel’s guarantees.
Intel Arc B580 launch date
The Intel Arc B580 launch date is Friday, December 13, 2024, simply in time for the vacation season. Comparatively, the brand new Nvidia RTX 5000 lineup isn’t anticipated to be unveiled till CES at the beginning of January 2025.
After all, the most important problem for Intel will probably be driver assist and compatibility points, which plagued its first desktop Arc GPUs at launch. Nonetheless, the corporate factors to the massive quantity of labor it’s completed with drivers over the previous few years, together with over 50 new driver releases, and over 120 new video games supported as quickly as they got here out. If Intel can actually nail driver assist, and ship all this for $249, then it could possibly be onto a winner.
Within the meantime, try our Intel Arc A770 assessment to see how we get on with benchmarking one of many firm’s earlier graphics playing cards.
