Two years ago, Intel unveiled its first Arc video cards, and I was somewhat dubious. Could a business which notoriously abandoned up on its last significant desktop GPU project in 2009 really have an impact on a market controlled by NVIDIA and AMD? Though Intel's bad drivers kept them back, when I looked over them in 2022 the Arc A750 and A770 performed better than I had expected. Intel appears to have grown from its blunders, though.
Budget ray tracing allows the new $250 Arc B580 to even tangle a little with NVIDIA and outperform AMD's low-end Radeon 7600. Given Intel's dubious business future, the only issue is whether buying an Intel video card is worth it. But at a price reminiscent of the early 2000s and a cheap video card, the risk might be justified.
The B580 marks the introduction of Intel's second-generation Arc Xe2 GPUs, and it'll be followed by the $219 B570 next month. Their specs by themselves help one to understand why they are interesting for budget games. With 20 Xe cores, 20 ray tracing units, and a higher clock speed than past Arc cards, the B580 is Most significantly, though, it's sports 12GB of VRAM with a 192-bit memory interface, giving it more than enough capacity to crank out 1440p games.
The $299 NVIDIA RTX 4060, in comparison, is stuck with 8GB of VRAM and a significantly more constrained 128-bit interface. Even the RTX 4060 Ti has that paltry amount of VRAM, restricting both of those GPUs largely to 1080p games (particularly if you wanted a little of ray tracing). AMD's Radeon RX 7600, which trades for roughly $269, is likewise encumbered with 8GB of RAM and worse ray tracing capabilities than NVIDIA and Intel's cards.
While Intel has a clear hardware edge, time is once again a big worry. The Arc B580 arrived as we're ready for CES 2025, where both NVIDIA and AMD are likely to show off new desktop GPUs. Given NVIDIA's ever-increasing costs, I wouldn't bank on seeing an RTX 5060 under $250, but AMD is another story. It's been attempting to make an impression in the low- and mid-range GPU market for years, and that’s allegedly still the case with its RDNA 4 cards. There's a fair probability we'll ultimately see some form of affordable next-gen GPU from AMD.
If you need to create a cheap gaming setup in the next several months or so, though, the Arc B580 will serve you well. In my tests, it scored marginally higher than the RTX 4060 Ti in 3DMark's Timespy Extreme Benchmark, and it was also substantially quicker than the Radeon 7600. The B580 gleamed even brighter with ray tracing. I scored a 58 fps average in the Cyberpunk 2077 test running at 1080p with Ultra graphics settings and mid-range ray tracing. The Radeon 7600, on the other hand, occasionally struggled to keep over 40 fps with identical settings.
I was truly astonished by how effectively the Arc B580 tackled 1440p gaming. In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I achieved 70 fps on average with high graphics settings, mid-range ray tracing with Intel's XeSS upscaling toggle on. That's higher performance than you'll get on the $700 PlayStation 5 Pro (though obviously, Sony's PSSR AI upscaling could seem nicer to your eyes). I also scored 85 fps on average when playing Halo Infinite at 1440p with full out graphics, which was significantly better than the 4060 Ti. While we're used to budget cards being mostly confined to 1080p gaming, the Arc B580's increased RAM definitely makes it well suitedfor 1440p.
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Still, there are perks that the competition gives. NVIDIA's RTX GPUs can also operate with its specialist programs, like NVIDIA Broadcaster, which can clean up your audio and video for broadcasts and recordings. Additionally, NVIDIA's DLSS 3 upscaling is available on over 500 titles, while Intel's XeSS only cracked 200. And then there’s the driver issue: NVIDIA has decades of expertise developing excellent GPU software, whereas Intel is still recovering from its recent driver errors. At least the XeSS 2 AI upscaling seems more beneficial than AMD's FSR 3 (FidelityFX Super Resolution), since Intel's innovation seems considerably superior and can typically enhance a game's performance by 30 percent or more.
The Arc B580 also endured many hours of benchmarks and gaming without any hardware or driver problems. When I originally tried the Arc A750 and A770, they would commonly crash within an hour of testing. Intel's software has certainly made some progress. The B580 reference model I tested likewise maintained pretty cool under load, and it never topped 64 degrees celsius (which also kept its two massive fans from ever generating much noise). While there will be third-party cards available, I was particularly delighted by Intel’s reference design: The B580 feels expensive and solid, not cheap and plasticky like many other budget GPUs.
At this point, it appears like Intel is already having difficulties keeping the Arc B580 in stock, a rare positive problem for the embattled chip manufacturer. It’s simple to understand why gamers are smitten: It gives respectable 1080p and 1440p performance for most new titles, even with a touch of ray tracing. Finally, there’s a realistic $250 GPU that doesn’t make you feel like you’re woefully behind the pack. It’s an obvious win for Intel — at least until we learn what’s fresh from AMD.