The new king of $250 GPUs (for now)

When Intel first appeared The first Arc video cards in two yearsI was more than a little skeptical. Can the company that famously abandoned its last major desktop GPU project in 2009 find success in a market dominated by NVIDIA and AMD? Well, when I reviewed them in 2022, the Arc A750 and A770 turned out to be better than I thought, although weak Intel drivers held them back as well. But Intel seems to have learned from its mistakes.

New $250 B580 bow It performs better than the low-end AMD Radeon 7600, and can even tie the knot a bit with NVIDIA when it comes to budget ray tracing. The only question is whether it is worth investing in an Intel video card given its specifications The outlook for companies is rocky. But for such a cheap video card, with a price tag dating back to the early 2000s, the risk may be worth it.

Intel

The Intel Arc B580 is a rarity: a $250 GPU that delivers solid 1080p and 1440p gaming, even with a little ray tracing.

Pros

• Faster than Radeon 7600 and RTX 4060
• XeSS upgrade works fine
• Great and quiet performance
• Only $250

cons

• XeSS is not as widely supported as DLSS 3
• New AMD cards may outperform it

$250 at New Age

The B580 marks the debut of Intel’s second-generation Arc Xe2 GPUs, and will be joined by the $219 B570 next month. Based on its specifications alone, it’s easy to see why it’s attractive to budget gamers. The B580 features 20 Xe cores, 20 ray tracing units, and a faster clock speed than previous Arc cards. Most importantly, it has 12GB of VRAM with a 192-bit memory interface, giving it enough space to run gameplay at 1440p resolution.

By comparison, the $299 NVIDIA RTX 4060 is stuck with 8GB of VRAM and a very limited 128-bit interface. Even the RTX 4060 Ti has a tiny amount of VRAM, which limits both of these GPUs from running mostly at 1080p (especially if you want a bit of ray tracing). AMD Radeon RX 7600which is priced at around $269, is also burdened with 8GB of RAM and weaker ray tracing performance than NVIDIA and Intel cards.

Although Intel has a clear advantage in hardware, timing is again a major concern. The Arc B580 has been launched as we gear up for CES 2025, where both NVIDIA and AMD are expected to show off new desktop GPUs. Given NVIDIA’s ever-increasing prices, I wouldn’t bet on seeing an RTX 5060 around $250, but AMD is another story. It has been trying to make a dent in the low- and mid-range GPU market for years, and This is said to still be the case With his RDNA 4 cards. There’s a good chance we’ll eventually see some kind of inexpensive next-gen GPU from AMD.

If you need to build a budget gaming rig in the next few months or so, the Arc B580 will serve you well. In my testing, it scored slightly higher than the RTX 4060 Ti on 3DMark’s Timespy Extreme Benchmark, and was also noticeably faster than the Radeon 7600. The B580 shined brighter with ray tracing. I reached an average of 58 fps in Cyberpunk 2077 The benchmark runs at 1080p with ultra graphics settings and mid-range ray tracing. On the other hand, the Radeon 7600 sometimes struggled to stay above 40 fps with similar settings.

I was really surprised at how well the Arc B580 handled games at 1440p. in dragon age: veil, It hit 70fps on average with high graphics settings, mid-range ray tracing, and Intel’s XeSS upscaling. That’s better performance than you’ll see on the $700 PlayStation 5 Pro (although Sony’s PSSR AI upgrade may look better to your eyes). I also hit 85fps on average while gaming Infinite aura At 1440p with maxed out graphics, which was slightly better than the 4060 Ti. While we’re used to budget cards being mainly limited to 1080p gaming, the Arc B580’s extra memory clearly makes it well-suited to 1440p resolution.

However, there are benefits that competition offers. NVIDIA’s RTX GPUs can also work with its specialized applications, such as NVIDIA Broadcaster, which can clean up audio and video for streaming and recordings. Additionally, NVIDIA’s DLSS 3 upgrade is available in more than 500 games, while Intel’s XeSS Just cracked 200. Then there’s the driver issue: NVIDIA has decades of experience designing solid GPU drivers, while Intel is still recovering from recent driver bugs. At least the XeSS 2 AI upgrade appears to be more beneficial than AMD’s FSR 3 (FidelityFX Supersolution), as Intel’s technology feels dramatically better and can often increase game performance by 30 percent or more.

The Arc B580 also survived several hours of benchmarking and gaming without any hardware or driver issues. When I first tested the Arc A750 and A770, they would often crash within an hour of testing. Clearly, Intel’s program has made some progress. The B580 reference model I tested also stayed relatively cool under load, never exceeding 64°C (which also kept the two large fans from making too much noise). Although there will be external cards available, I was also impressed by Intel’s reference design: the B580 looks premium and powerful, not cheap and floppy like many other budget GPUs.

At this point, it appears that Intel already has Problem keeping Arc B580 in stocka rare good problem to have The beleaguered chip giant. It’s easy to see why gamers will love it: it delivers solid 1080p and 1440p performance for most new games, even with a little ray tracing. Finally, there’s a viable $250 GPU that doesn’t make you feel like you’re woefully behind the pack. It’s a clear win for Intel – at least until we see what’s new from AMD.