We thought that 2024 was going to end quietly after the launch of the Intel Core Ultra 200S processors, but no, Intel is unveiling a new range of graphics cards on 3 December, including an Intel ARC B580 and an Intel ARC B570. We attended a press conference on Monday evening, which was packed with announcements. Today we’re going to take a look at the unboxing of the Intel ARC B580 Limited Edition graphics card that we’ve just received. Of course, we won’t be revealing any results just yet, so you’ll just have to be patient. Many thanks to Intel France for making this copy of the Intel ARC B580 Limited Edition available.
Arc Battlemage: two models for launch
This week we’ll be bringing you a full report on the new technologies on board this new range of Intel GPUs. However, we can already announce the arrival of an Intel ARC B580 and an Intel ARC B570. These two Arc Battlemage models will feature the second generation of Xe cores. As you might expect, these will be more powerful and there will be fewer of them than in the previous generation.
The Intel ARC B580 Limited Edition will be equipped with 20 Xe2 cores and 20 ray tracing units. It will have 12 GB of GDDR6 memory with a 192-bit memory interface, providing a bandwidth of 456 GB/s. The GPU frequency is announced as 2670 MHz. Its little sister, the ARC B570 Limited Edition, will have 18 Xe2 cores and 18 ray tracing units. It will have 10 GB of GDDR6 memory with a 160-bit memory interface, providing a bandwidth of 380 GB/s. The GPU frequency is announced as 2500 MHz.
Despite some rumours in recent weeks, these two models will indeed be PCIe 4.0 x8. As far as TDP is concerned, the B580 has been announced at 190 watts and the B570 at 150 watts, which is also excellent news. We’ll also be keeping a close eye on idle power consumption, which was a negative point at the launch of the ARC A750/A770.
The Intel ARC B580 will go on sale on 13 December 2024 at a recommended retail price of US $249, while we’ll have to wait until 16 January 2025 to see the arrival of the B570 model, priced at US $219. These are very aggressive prices, given that the ARC A770 was launched at $329 and the ARC A750 at $289.
Intel has also announced the list of partners that will be offering Intel boards. These include Acer, ASRock, Gunnir, MaxSun, Onix and Sparkle. As you can see, there’s not much that’s new, apart from MaxSun, which has been added as a new Intel partner. These models will have their own cooling systems and in-house PCBs, with the ASRock ARC B580 Steel Legend, for example, featuring two power connectors.
Intel ARC B580: a board for 1440p definition?
This was the announcement that surprised us the most. Intel explains in its slides that the trend among competitive gamers is to move away from 1080p and towards 1440p definition. This is indeed a new trend that is taking shape, and one that has already been highlighted by NVIDIA.
Intel has announced that its ARC B580 card will be designed for this 1440p definition and has therefore compared the performance of the B580 with that of the A750. The blues show an average gain of 24%. It would also have been interesting to know the gains over the A770 version.
But where we’re a little confused, and we have to admit it, is when Intel compares the performance of its ARC B580 model with NVIDIA’s RTX 4060 and AMD’s RX 7600, two fully 1080p-oriented cards. We were convinced that this ARC B580 model was intended for 1080p definition, unless concessions were made on graphics options within games. Is Intel relying on its in-house upscaling to promote the use of 1440p?
Intel will also be offering a second-generation XeSS with XeSS-SR (Super Resolution), XeSS-FR (Frame Generation) and XeSS-LL (Low Latency). In the end, our tests will provide a clearer picture of performance in 1080p and 1440p.
Overclocking evolves!
The good news is that while overclocking was not the easiest thing to do with the first generation ARC GPUs, Intel seems determined to change all that. We already know that certain custom models will benefit from higher frequencies than the B580 Limited Edition. Intel has announced that it has carried out an in-depth review of the various options in the ‘ Performance, Overclocking & Controls ‘ section.
We’ll see what gains we can expect from overclocking this Intel ARC B580 Limited Edition in our test.
