Intel’s latest drivers provide software support for its latest graphics card, the Arc A580, which is now being launched by Intel at a price of $179.99 as a rival to NVIDIA’s RTX 3050. A successful gamble?
Arc A580: the Intel board launched at $179!
As a reminder, Intel’s Arc A580 is equipped with a 6nm ACM-G10 GPU. However, for this board, the chip is castrated compared to the A750, which shares the same GPU. It features 24 Xe Cores out of the 32 that make it up. It also features 384 execution units, including a total of 3072 shaders, 384 XMX AI cores and 24 ray tracing units. Finally, the chip contains 192 TMUs and 96 ROPs.
Memory is substantial for a card in this range. It features 8 GB of VRAM on a 256-bit bus. Using GDDR6 operating at 16 Gbps, memory bandwidth is 512 GB/s.
In terms of performance, Intel has positioned its card against the RTX 3050, which is getting a run for its money. TechpowerUp ‘s tests are clear on this point. In reality, the Arc A580 is better positioned than an AMD RX 6600 or RTX 2060, or even RTX 2070, depending on gaming resolution.
However, it will certainly be necessary to readjust the graphics settings of certain games to reach 60 fps in 1080p. Nevertheless, for competitive games such as MOBAs or even Counter Strike 2, it should do just fine.
At present, the card seems to be available only from two manufacturers: ASRock and Sparkle, who offer Challenger and Orc versions respectively. Between the two, ASRock’s model seems to be the most interesting, thanks to lower memory and GPU temperatures and much less noise.
The question now is when these cards will be available.
