Intel Arc B580 Review: A Budget GPU Champion with Impressive Performance

The Intel Arc B580, the latest addition to Intel’s lineup of discrete graphics cards, has been making waves with its impressive performance and competitive pricing. Powered by the new Battlemage (Xe2) GPU architecture, the B580 is designed to cater to the budget to mainstream gaming market with a price tag of $249.

The Arc B580 features 20 Xe Cores, each containing 4 Vector Engines, resulting in a total of 2,560 shaders. Although this is fewer than the 4,096 shaders of the previous Arc A770, Intel has significantly improved the per-core performance by up to 70%. This enhancement, combined with higher boost clocks of up to 2,850MHz, contributes to the B580’s superior performance despite having fewer cores.

One of the standout features of the B580 is its generous 12GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, outdoing the 8GB memory of its competitors like the AMD Radeon RX 7600 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060. This ample memory is particularly beneficial for 1080p and 1440p gaming, where memory demands are increasing with each new AAA game release.

In terms of performance, the Arc B580 has shown promising results. It outperforms the Nvidia RTX 4060 in several benchmarks, including a 21% lead in Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1440p resolution. However, it does fall behind in certain games like Assassin’s Creed Mirage, highlighting some inconsistencies in its performance.

The B580 also integrates XMX cores, Intel’s AI tensor cores, which power the XeSS 2 AI upscaling technology. This technology is similar to Nvidia’s DLSS and helps in enhancing game performance by scaling lower-resolution frames to native resolution using AI algorithms.

Despite its strong performance, the B580 is not without its drawbacks. The drivers still have occasional quirks, and there are lingering concerns about efficiency and density compared to Nvidia GPUs. Additionally, the overclocking process is marred by stability issues and confusing voltage settings.

Overall, the Intel Arc B580 offers excellent value for its price, making it a compelling choice for those seeking a budget-friendly yet powerful graphics card for 1440p gaming.