Intel reveals their $249 ARC B580 and $219 ARC B570 “Battlemage” Xe2 GPUs
Intel officially reveals their Battlemage B-series of desktop GPUs – Xe2 has arrived
Intel has officially revealed its ARC Battlemage B-series of desktop GPUs. With this new GPU lineup, Intel aims for best-in-class value for money, which means that Intel plans to revolutionise the GPU market as we know it. The Intel ARC B580 and ARC B570 have arrived!
With pricing of $249 and below, Intel’s ARC Battlemage B-series aims to upend the low-end GPU market. To do this, Intel promises to deliver more performance and more VRAM than its competitors. In other words, Intel is shipping better GPUs than its competition.
Intel’s Battlemage GPUs launch with the company’s new Xe2 graphic architecture. With this new architecture comes 2nd generation Xe cores, 2nd generation ray tracing units, and new XMX AI engines.
Overall, Intel’s Xe2 desktop graphics architecture has delivered a 70% performance boost per Xe core. Add in a 50% boost in performance/watt, and Intel has delivered on the two performance fronts that matter. This is how Intel’s newest GPUs can best their last-generation counterparts with less power and fewer Xe cores.
XeSS 2 gives Intel’s Battlemage GPUs a boost
Intel has launched its ARC B-series GPUs with a new version of XeSS. Alongside XeSS Super Resolution, Intel has developed two new additions to XeSS: XeSS Frame Generation and XeSS Low Latency. This allows Intel to boost the smoothness of games with AI-made frames and reduce the latency of games to increase responsiveness.
These new features are Intel’s answer to Nvidia DLSS 3 Frame Generation, AMD FSR 3 Frame Generation, Nvidia Reflex, and AMD Anti-Lag 1/2. Now, Intel has feature parity with AMD and Nvidia.
Intel ARC B580 and B570 Specifications
Below are the specifications of Intel’s newest GPUs. Note that both are relatively close, with the B580 featuring more Xe cores, more memory, and higher GPU clock speeds. This makes sense, as the ARC B580 and ARC B570 have similar pricing, with the former costing $249 while the latter costs $219.
Below, we can see how the ARC B580 compares to Intel’s ARC A750. Despite the latter having more Xe cores and a higher power draw, Intel’s new B580 GPU is 24% faster than an A750 on average. That’s a solid improvement from Intel, and it makes us wonder what a hypothetical B750 would look like.
Intel has also claimed that their B580 is 10% faster than Nvidia’s RTX 4060 on average.
Improving ARC’s weak points
While the B580 is 24% faster than the A750 on average, there are outliers that highlight that Intel has delivered some major improvements to their underlying architecture. Games that were considered ARC weak points now run much faster than before. Note that Assassin’s Creed Mirage runs 56% faster and Fortnite runs 78% faster at 1440p Ultra settings.
Intel ARC B580 and B570 pricing and board partners
Intel’s ARC B580 will be available from December 13th, and its pricing starts at $249. The ARC B570 will be released on January 16th with a starting price of $219. This time, Intel has more board partners for their ARC CPU family. Acer ASRock, GUNNIR, MAXSUN, ONIX and SPARKLE are all creating ARC B-series GPUs with Intel. Intel will also be releasing their own “Intel Limited Edition” GPUs.
So far, the Battlemage series appears to be a major improvement over Intel’s prior GPUs. What we have here is a GPU series that aims to deliver excellent value, and that is what we need to see in this part of the GPU market. More VRAM and more performance for less money!
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