Review: Intel Arc B580 is a compelling, if incredibly tardy, $250 midrange GPU
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Looks very decent, but yeah, probably too little too late. If Intel had managed to come up with something like this with their first generation. i think we'd be looking at a totally different picture in the GPU market
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I'd still be wary of recommending an ARC GPU until Intel makes a public commitment to support given how crucial drivers are and the stress that their business is under. I don't worry that Nvidia or AMD might cut their GPU line abruptly, but I'd almost be more surprised if Intel doesn't kill off the ARC gaming GPU line.
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Sounding pretty great, and gives one hope for the ever-whispered promised land of GPU price wars.
Trump tariffs are mentioned in the article. I'm curious if anyone has thoughts on them affecting prices outside the States. I'm in the UK and hoping to do an AM5 build next year.
Trump tariffs are mentioned in the article. I'm curious if anyone has thoughts on them affecting prices outside the States. I'm in the UK and hoping to do an AM5 build next year.
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Except it's basically the same tech, but beefed up, as is in their integrated GPUs - and there's basically no chance of those going away. Any work on drivers for one line flows into the other.
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Generally beats a 4060 for less and a 7600 for the same price. Not sure what else people could ask for.
Obviously they'll have to compete against new GPUs from NV and AMD here shortly, but we don't have those so we can't draw any conclusions there. The smart thing would be to wait for those GPUs to drop to see what things look like when comparing the latest and what will be available side-by-side shortly.
One fear I have with Intel becoming competitive in the GPU market is that AMD and Intel end up splitting the lower to lower-mid range (rumors are AMD and Intel aren't coming out with anything in the super high end this generation) and NV just keeps milking the high end. NV will have no need to lower prices, and they've demonstrated they're happy to keep jacking up prices massively each generation, while Intel and AMD have to split the lower margins low end. Can the lower half of the market support two competing GPU makers without being subsidized by some of the higher margin parts?
Obviously they'll have to compete against new GPUs from NV and AMD here shortly, but we don't have those so we can't draw any conclusions there. The smart thing would be to wait for those GPUs to drop to see what things look like when comparing the latest and what will be available side-by-side shortly.
One fear I have with Intel becoming competitive in the GPU market is that AMD and Intel end up splitting the lower to lower-mid range (rumors are AMD and Intel aren't coming out with anything in the super high end this generation) and NV just keeps milking the high end. NV will have no need to lower prices, and they've demonstrated they're happy to keep jacking up prices massively each generation, while Intel and AMD have to split the lower margins low end. Can the lower half of the market support two competing GPU makers without being subsidized by some of the higher margin parts?
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enlightened.doggo
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Perfectly reasonable performance for a budget card. These are going to be very popular
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The mere prospect of tariffs is already affecting prices outside of the States, as manufacturers are prioritizing shipments to the US right now to build stock in advance.
This means that, for example, the 9800X3D is nearly non-existent in Europe, with very occasional, very limited stock available at stupid upcharges.
Maybe that changes when the tariffs actually hit. But realistically they've just seen people are willing to pay more.
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This prospect is exactly where an open source policy can sell more units even without opening the source. If Intel committed to opening the source of the drivers in the event it discontinues support for them, more people would buy the product with the closed source, mitigating the risk the product will be stranded at some point. Intel doesn't even have to open the source until it decides it's not spending/making any more money on the product. It seems like a marketer's great idea, and also actually a great idea.
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Seeing the EVGA branding on the cards power cable makes me long for the good old days. They were always quality until Nvidia did them dirty.
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IMO, Intel pretty much needs to improve their GPUs long-term in order to survive as a competitive chipmaker. Their stock price is down 60% over the past year largely due to not having competitive GPU products that could potentially be improved into "AI-grade" chips.
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No. That's what screwed up their initial driver efforts; that they based it on their IGPs. They readily admitted it.
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It looks like it should have decent Linux support:
Intel Arc B580 Graphics Open-Source Driver Linux Gaming Performance
Intel Arc B580 Delivers Promising Linux GPU Compute Potential For Battlemage
Intel Arc B580 Graphics Open-Source Driver Linux Gaming Performance
Intel Arc B580 Delivers Promising Linux GPU Compute Potential For Battlemage
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Normal people don't know or care when hardware releases happen. And besides where do you draw the line? Is Battlemage 1.5yr late to the current gen party? Or are they kicking off the next release cycle? It's being compared against NV's 4000 series and AMD's 7000 series right now because that's what's available. In a month or two or whenever the other teams drop their new GPUs, they'll be compared against that.
What matters to normal people is what's available now and what it costs. If in 6 months Intel's GPU beats out equivalently priced GPUs from AMD and NV, or equals them at a lower price, that's a win for Intel and will be attractive to a normal buyer who doesn't care about keeping up what released when. They just want to know if it can play their games and how much it will hurt their wallet.
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- Intel still can't compete at the high-end of the GPU market, or even the medium-high-end
This isn't a tick for the "bad" category. They're very clearly not going after that end of the market right now. The price of these cards are specifically aimed at the low end and meant to undercut them on performance per dollar and they've succeeded.
I'm not going to argue for any one to buy either of these cards, but they're a solid choice and if you're looking for a low end card to build a PC now, it does not matter what's coming out in six months. Especially since it's very unlikely a 5060 will be anywhere near the same budget price
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"There are actually good arguments for building a budget gaming PC right this minute, before potential Trump-administration tariffs can affect prices or supply chains, but assuming the tech industry can maintain its normal patterns, it would be smartest to wait and see what Nvidia does next."
I totally agree that there are "good arguments for building a budget gaming PC right this minute." With the exception of specifically Nvidia cards, good gaming PC componentry is very reasonably priced at the moment. However, even "assuming the tech industry can maintain its normal patterns," I'm not sure that I agree that it's "smartest to wait and see what Nvidia does next." Of course, we always get caught up with considering postponing buying a new gaming rig on the promise of new soon-to-be-released stuff. But regardless what Nvidia pumps out in the first quarter of 2025, I don't think you can go wrong now, especially if your aim is a budget rig.
Hell, it's even a good time right now to purchase a high-end gaming PC. You know it's going to be a very expensive long and uncertain wait next year for the latest, greatest Nvidia GPUs. So unless you're willing to wait until the summer or fall of next year (and the longer you wait, the less certain the aforementioned assumption becomes), then buying now is probably smarter than buying later.
I totally agree that there are "good arguments for building a budget gaming PC right this minute." With the exception of specifically Nvidia cards, good gaming PC componentry is very reasonably priced at the moment. However, even "assuming the tech industry can maintain its normal patterns," I'm not sure that I agree that it's "smartest to wait and see what Nvidia does next." Of course, we always get caught up with considering postponing buying a new gaming rig on the promise of new soon-to-be-released stuff. But regardless what Nvidia pumps out in the first quarter of 2025, I don't think you can go wrong now, especially if your aim is a budget rig.
Hell, it's even a good time right now to purchase a high-end gaming PC. You know it's going to be a very expensive long and uncertain wait next year for the latest, greatest Nvidia GPUs. So unless you're willing to wait until the summer or fall of next year (and the longer you wait, the less certain the aforementioned assumption becomes), then buying now is probably smarter than buying later.
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Definitely considering it for an upgrade to my 1060. The only thing that worries me, is whether Intel stays the course, or if 2-3 years into the product lifespan, they give up driver development.
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The PS to the "Ugly": There's rumors that there may not be a real competitor in the upper mid let alone the high tier to compete with whatever AMD or Nvidia finally release next year. If Battlemage doesn't sell well there may not be a 3rd generation release. Gaming isn't driving the GPU market any more. Compute is even driving consumer grade hardware more than gaming at this point as content creation becomes democratized and creators are noticing when their hardware can't encode or render as fast as they may wish. It's hard to recommend anything from Intel as it appears a breakup of somekind is imminent. Once you get rid of the engineers from leadership and put the business adminstrators in charge (as just happened) you're looking at a company in late stages just before the spinnoffs and mass layoffs begin in earnest. If Intel is around as more than a name in 5 years I'll be surprised.
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Intel should be canning a few hundred MBAs and investing the savings in something like a Steam OS device at an aggressive price point. They seem to have decent hardware here but they need volume to get game developers to tune for them and for buyers to feel comfortable that they won’t be orphaned.
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I wouldn't hold your breath on that. Competing at the high end of the graphics market is way harder for lots of reasons, both technical and business related. AMD has a hell of a lot more presence in the space than Intel, and even they couldn't put out a 4090 tier card this generation, the very top end of the market was basically ceded to Nvidia. Which I'm honestly not that mad about--I'm very happy running a 6950 XT, which is a very solid card that I got for a very reasonable price.
What I'd really like is for there to be viable competition against CUDA, because various AI workloads are one spot where AMD and Intel's more generous VRAM could let them really hit above their weight class...if it wasn't for the fact that Nvidia has such a massive entrenched lead with the CUDA stack.
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Um...
I think it's largely due to them not having decent processors - or at least not as good as AMD has been producing.
Granted, AMD went all in on both CPU/GPU manufacturing, so you have both chips adding to their bottom line. But Intel was always JUST about CPU's. Their video was always, at best, basic (mostly something on board so you could install an OS without too much worry about the video quality since one always installed another GPU in there if they had any shits to give about video speed/performance).
That they're going into GPU's in any big way came as a bit of a surprise to ME, since their processors have gone to shit with bugs, flaws and a host of other things that AMD has somehow avoided, and still kept prices below Intel's for the most part. It seemed to me that they're throwing shit against a wall, hoping some of it sticks. I'd've thought they'd try to focus on fixing their CPU's/drivers first and claw back some of the market share (and respect) they've lost in the last several years.
I'd love to see an Nvidia-killer out there, and AMD is getting pretty close these days. Intel is a welcome addition to the playing field, but their reputation as of late is shit. There's a REASON they were de-listed from the DOW, after all. Bad products and mistakes lead to lost sales and lost revenue.
But from what I've experienced, they were never big into video chips until recently.
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Intel is getting better. I'm starting to really hope they've changed their minds since that leak shortly after the release of their first GPUs that said they already decided Battlemage would be their final desktop GPU generation.
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I'm running an NV card for the foreseeable future but I really hope Intel stays the course, here. We need competition.
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The Arc GPUs still have problems with ... some games. Mostly older games afaik, but for people like me who like to run all sorts of stuff they're not ideal. But yeah this is otherwise a quite good card.
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Yeah, I've seen a bunch of review include the caveat that the 50-series is right around the corner, but what's likely right around the corner is the presumptive 5090. If this release cycle is anything like the last few generations, the next Nvidia card in this performance class might actually be six months away. And cost at least $300.
If you're looking for this kind of price/performance now, this card is a pretty reasonable pick.
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The same cores are being used in Intel's iGPUs now, so a lot of the codebase is going to be shared, and Intel has generally been fairly good with software support, unlike AMD, although the company's questionable outlook maybe casts some aversions there.
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Perfect timing as I was going to build a new rig for some retro gaming, and some not so new titles.
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Do you know which games? I too like older games, so it would be good to know.
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Still gives them a few months, and it really looks like NVidia is going to have a 5060 with 8GB again...
I've read multiple reviews, this looks really decent, and if looking for a low end card it's reasonable choice, where Alchemist cards really struggled to make a case for themselves at all.
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Hopefully the $250 price point will cause some pressure on the incumbents to keep their low- to mid-end cards reasonably affordable, but I don't see Intel gaining much ground this generation. At least the drivers are in a fit state now.
The power consumption story in the review here is incomplete: the B580 pulls 35 Watts at the desktop at idle. That's significantly worse than a 4090 (a non-OC Strix model draws around 10W) and 7 times more than a low end AMD card. See Gamers Nexus review for more info.
The power consumption story in the review here is incomplete: the B580 pulls 35 Watts at the desktop at idle. That's significantly worse than a 4090 (a non-OC Strix model draws around 10W) and 7 times more than a low end AMD card. See Gamers Nexus review for more info.
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Compiling a complete list would be impossible probably. Here are 250 games tested though (new and old), out of those only 4 didn't run at all. Some of them you might be able to get to run, but it will probably require research. It's not a huge problem, and it's not like AMD or Nvidia don't have problems with random old games, but it's absolutely a bigger problem for Intel.
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As was I, but the requirements for this card mean I'd need a whole new PC just to get it. Wouldn't be the worst thing, but I also don't have a very compelling reason to spend several hundred on top of the card just to do that. At that point I then have to consider if it's more worth getting a more expensive drop-in replacement.
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