Intel Arc B580 LE Graphics Card Review: Solid 1440p Gaming for a Little Less

Slipping just below the typical price of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 — $280 vs. $249 — and just above its typical performance, Intel’s Arc B580 graphics card makes a nice impression as an upgrade from the ground up for older PCs. But not too old, because if you decided to save money on power when you bought or built your system, that may be borderline for this card. Thanks to an additional 4GB of video memory, the Arc B580 Limited Edition (Intel’s house-branded card) offers a little more space than 8GB cards to help you improve performance for AI or upscale your gaming quality. In the branding alphabet, the B stands for Battlemage.

But while it’s a good card, I’m not sure there’s enough here to help Intel gain more than first genwhich barely registers a market share. Inertia is a HUGE factor.

This is it the second generation for Intel’s Arc discrete graphicsand the company uses 12GB of VRAM to differentiate it from Nvidia’s 8GB cards. 1080p and 1440p gaming generally use the same amount of video memory, or at least both fit comfortably within 8GB. Once you start adding some awesome ones – literally, in the case of ray tracing – the memory should start to grow, which can push you over the 8GB barrier. (The big jump is between 1440p and 4K.)

Intel Arc B580 limited edition

Memory	12GB GDDR6
Memory capacity (GBps)	456
Memory Clock (GHz)	2,375
GPU Clock (GHz)	2,670
Data speed in memory/Interface	19Gbps/192 bits
Render Slices/RT cores	5/20
Execution Units/Texture Mapping Units	20/160
Shaders	2560
XMX AI Engines/Top Integer TOPS	160/233
The process	5 nm
TBP/min PSU (watts)	190/600
Maximum heat (degrees)	n/a
Bus	PCIe 4 x 8
Size	2 slots; 10.7×4.5 inches/272x115mm
Connections	3 x DP 2.1, 1 x HDMI 2.1
Current price	$249
Delivery date	December 13, 2024

But the other part of the equation is how well the card does at ray tracing and other DirectX 12 Ultimate features (as opposed to simply putting it into memory), and there the RTX 4060 and B580 are about the same – ie. , just fine. Intel is counting on XeSS 2, its second-generation upscaling and optimization technology (which includes frame interpolation technology similar to AMD’s FidelityFX Fluid Motion Frames and Nvidia DLSS 3.k) and aggressive speed boosts, to maintain frame rates. However, AMD still lags woefully behind.

For best results, XeSS 2 requires custom game developer support (frame generation doesn’t work without it, although other parts of XeSS don’t need it). And XeSS 2 is not backwards compatible with the first generation, so games that support the first version do not automatically support the latest. It’s also necessary to take advantage of Intel’s input lag reduction, XeLL, which serves a similar purpose to Nvidia’s Reflek.

after all, Intel lists 43 games that support the first version of XeSS and a few that will support XeSS 2. Even if it’s not an exhaustive list (and I don’t think it is), there’s not much motivation right now to buy a GPU that relies on it, no matter how good it is. (I haven’t tested it because there is currently only one game, F1 24, and no abstract benchmark yet.)

on the other hand, Intel’s Core Ultra 200V series (Lunar Lake)uses the same GPU technology for its integrated graphics (though stripped down to save power), and Intel’s integrated GPUs technically dominate the market; XeSS 2 will run on Lunar Lake, which could be a big incentive for developers to support it.

Design and performance

The extra memory, among other things, makes this card a bit more power-hungry than some entry-to-midrange systems bought in 2020 that are now ripe for upgrade. If you’re one of those people who thought “I’ll save money and get a 450 watt power supply”, this card is no good for a 190 watt power draw for a card. Especially if you want to overclock it.

But the B570 may exist to fill that niche. we will see. It’s shorter than the A750 was, but it also takes up two slots, so that may factor into your decision. And considering it only has two fans, it feels a little long. However, despite its length, it’s quite light, so it doesn’t need support like many GPUs we see these days. Not even holding it during installation (because I struggle with only two hands).

As mentioned earlier, I think the extra memory helped prevent a bottleneck on the generative AI, and it also helps if you want to try gaming in 4K; but better than the competition does not necessarily mean that it is usable. And it lags a lot in the SpecViewPerf Pro graphics tests in both 1080p and 4K, so technical graphics pros may want to stick with Nvidia since CUDA has been around for years.

For older games, even without XeSS, it runs pretty well at 1440p and on Speedway, 3DMark’s DX12 Ultimate benchmark (1440p) — all silly technologies like ray tracing on Windows. But it falls a little short of DKSR, which only measures the ray tracing component. But only a little. Don’t run behind the train like AMD.

But for modern, GPU-heavy AAA games without XeSS support, you may end up dropping the quality or resolution back to 1080p. I threw it Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on it (1440p, high quality) and struggled to reach 60fps.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to test the new overclocking controls before I had to write this, but hopefully I’ll get around to them later.

I don’t begrudge Intel the Sisyphean task of getting the second generation of cards out, but the company has put a lot of thought into them and seems determined to continue with support, new drivers and so on. The Intel Arc B580 LE is pretty good if you have to stick to a tight budget and certainly gives you a lot of GPU for the money.

Performance results

Test game Shadow of the Tomb Raider (1080p)

A750 LE 80RTX 3060 82RX 7600 82RKS 7600 KST 85RTX 4060 96B580 LE 103RKS 6750 KST 115RTX 4060 Ti (8GB) 117

3DMark Steel Nomad

Lenovo Legion T5 26IRB8 2,366Miniforum AtomMan G7 Ti 2,878Origin PC custom (B580 LE) 3,079Alienware Aurora R16 3,659

3DMark Fire Strike Ultra

RTX 3060 5,269RTX 4060 6,040A750 LE 6,984RX 7600 7,401RTX 4060 Ti (8GB) 7,695RKS 7600 KST 7,757B580 LE 7,953RKS 6750 KST 9,090RTX 4070 10,413

Guardians of the Galaxy (High @2560×1440)

A750 LE 80RX 7600 97RTX 3060 100B580 LE 101RKS 7600 KST 101RTX 4060 109RTX 4070 175

SpecViewPerf 2020 SolidWorks (4K)

Arc A750 LE 50.64RX 7600 78.18Arch B580 LE 79.27RTX 4060 8GB 99.4RTX 4060 Ti 111.58RKS 7600 KST 112.5RKS 6750 KST 131.41RKS 7700 KST 143.42RTX 4070 154.28

3DMark Speedway (DX12 Ultimate)

RKS 7600 KST 1,913RX 7600 1,955RTX 3060 2,157A750 LE 2,366B580 LE 2,446RTX 4060 2,539RTX 4060 Ti (8GB) 3,181RTX 4070 4,479

Geekbench AI GPU (semi-precision)

Mac Mini M4 (integrated) 10,112Acer Swift SF14-51T (integrated) 19,672B580 LE 35,016

Procion Stable Diffusion XL

Lenovo Legion T5 (RTX 4060) 368Origin PC adapted (Arc B580 LE, OpenWINO) 1,581Alienware Aurora R16 (RTX 4070) 1,690Alienware m18 R2 (RTX 4090 mobile, Tensor RT) 2,276Origin PC adapted (RTX 4070 Ti Super, Tensor RT) 2,660

Procion Stable Diffusion 1.5

Lenovo Legion T5 (RTX 4060, Tensor RT) 1,140Alienware m16 R2 (RTX 4070 mobile, TensorRT) 1,327Origin PC adapted (Arc B580 LE, OpenWINO) 1,475Alienware Aurora R16 (RTX 4070, TensorRT) 1,998Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super (TensorRT) 3,005

Test system configurations

Acer Swift 14 AI (SF14-51T-75AF)	Microsoft Windows 11 Home; Intel Core Ultra 7 258V; 32GB DDR5 RAM; Intel Arc 140V graphics; 1TB SSD
Alienware Aurora R16	Microsoft Windows 11 Pro; 2.5 GHz Intel Core i9-14400KF; 32GB DDR5-5600; 12GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070
Alienware m16 R2	Microsoft Windows 11 Home 23H2; 1.4 GHz Intel Core 7 Ultra 155H; 16GB DDR5 5,600MHz RAM; 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU; 1TB SSD
Alienware m18 R2	Microsoft Windows 11 Home 23H2; 2.2 GHz Intel Core 19-14900HKS; 32GB DDR5-5600 RAM; 16GB GDDR6 Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU @ 175v; 2TB SSD
Apple Mac Mini M4	Apple MacOS Sequoia 15.1; Apple M4 (10-core CPU, 10-core GPU); 16GB LPDDR5; 512 GB SSD
Lenovo Legion T5 26IRB8 (90UT001AUS)	Microsoft Windows 11 Home; 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5-14400F; 16GB DDR5-4400; 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060
Miniforum AtomMan G7 Ti	Microsoft Windows 11 Home; 2.2 GHz Intel Core i9-14900HKS; 32GB DDR5-5600; 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 mobile (140v)