Intel Arc B580 'Battlemage' GPU Review & Benchmarks vs. NVIDIA RTX 4060, AMD RX 7600, & More
jimmy_thang
December 11, 2024
We test the B580’s ray tracing capabilities, power efficiency, and performance across numerous games at 4K, 1440p, and 1080p
The Highlights
- The B580 represents the first graphics card that uses Intel’s Battlemage GPU architecture
- The B580’s idle power consumption needs improvement and we couldn’t get the GPU to run Cyberpunk at RT Ultra settings
- The B580 highlights how Battlemage has improved tremendously over Intel’s Alchemist GPU architecture
- Original MSRP: $250
- Release Date: December 13, 2024
Table of Contents
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Intro
Intel’s Battlemage B580 GPU launches at $250. In our testing, the card has improved massively over the company’s original Alchemist GPU launch, so it’s already in a better spot than previously. By price, the B580 is positioned to compete with the NVIDIA RTX 4060 $300 GPU and the AMD RX 7600 at $250. Both NVIDIA and AMD have new GPUs launching in early January, but until they’re out, we can’t evaluate their performance.
What we can say is that, out of the gate, the B580 is far more reliable than the Alchemist cards were at launch. Intel has definitely improved. It still has issues and it was still shipping driver updates until the last minute of testing, but the company has objectively improved.
Editor's note: This was originally published on December 12, 2024 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.
Credits
Test Lead, Host, Writing
Steve Burke
Testing
Patrick Lathan
Testing, Editing
Mike Gaglione
Chart QC
Jeremy Clayton
Camera
Tim Phetdara
Andrew Coleman
Writing, Web Editing
Jimmy Thang
Frametimes have largely been smoothed over, but remain a potential pain point for Intel in some games. Idle power consumption is also a pain point; however, overall value and throughput are competitive, and ray tracing performance is particularly competitive, especially against AMD.
We also found that the B580 scales extremely well with higher resolutions, seeing the most uplift over the 4060 or 7600 at 4K and 1440p, and often losing that ground at 1080p.
It’s an interesting review packed with a ton of new information, including a complete overhaul of our GPU test bench to an overclocked 9800X3D platform.
Let’s get started.
Intel B580 Overview, Pricing, & Specs
Here’s a quick refresher on the current market for GPU prices, but remember that the RTX 50 series is rumored to launch next month, followed by rumors of new AMD GPUs.
GPU Price Comparison | GamersNexus | Early December, 2024
| Newegg Price | Amazon Price |
| Intel B580 (MSRP $250) | $250 | NFS |
| Intel A770 | $230 | $280 |
| Intel A750 | $240 | $200 |
| Intel A580 | $170 | $170 |
| NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti 8GB | $400 | $400 |
| NVIDIA RTX 4060 | $300 | $295 |
| NVIDIA RTX 3060 | $280 | $270 |
| NVIDIA RTX 3050 | $170 | $170 |
| AMD RX 6600 | $190 | $200 |
| AMD RX 6600 XT | $240 | $260 |
| AMD RX 7600 | $250 | $252 |
| AMD RX 7700 XT | $400 | $420 |
For today: The B580 has an MSRP of $250 and was available for preorder on Newegg at this price. The prior Intel A770 is available for $230 to $280 for the 16GB model, with the A750 at $200 to $240 and A580 at $170. NVIDIA’s RTX 4060 is a main competitor, typically at $300, alongside the RX 7600 at price parity with the B580. These will be the two key comparisons.
One step up, the 4060 Ti 8GB and 7700 XT are both around $400 to $420 right now, making them primary upgrade options another class up.
Intel B580 Specs
We already covered the B580 specs in a video, but here are the basics again:
The card launches ahead of the B570 (watch our coverage), which launches next month. The B580 is a relatively small 20 Xe2 core configuration on the Battlemage architecture, making it smaller than the A750 or A770 in configuration size. Intel hasn’t yet announced 700-series cards in the Battlemage series.
The B580 has a 190W default TDP, runs on 1x 8-pin power connector, and is cut down to PCIe 4.0 x8, which is a potential downside for anyone on old platforms. We’d have to look at that separately in the future.
Test Bench Overhaul
We have a brand new test bench for all of this. We’ve moved from an overclocked 12700K to an AMD 9800X3D, which marks the first time we’ve used an AMD CPU as our permanent GPU test bench solution in the nearly 16 years we’ve been running now. The 9800X3D gives us far better headroom and scaling to see the impact of high-end GPUs that should be coming out soon. We have it overclocked to 5.4GHz all-core and under a 420mm Arctic Liquid Freezer III.
GPU Game Test Suite | 2025 Methodology | GamersNexus
| Game | Resolution & Settings | Release Year |
| Black Myth: Wukong Benchmark | 1080p/High
1440p/High
4K/High
*Upscaling is not used. 100% for all tests. Game forces selection, selected FSR. Full RT disabled. | 2024 |
| (Ray Tracing) Black Myth: Wukong Benchmark | 1080p/High Raster/Medium RT/FSR Quality
1440p/High Raster/Medium RT/FSR Quality
4K/High Raster/Medium RT/FSR Quality
*FSR selected as upscaling method for all tests. Scaling set to "FSR Quality" equivalent. Full Ray Tracing set to Medium. | 2024 |
| F1 24 | 1080p/High
1440p/High
4K/High | 2024 |
| (Ray Tracing) F1 24 | 1080p/RT Ultra
1440p/RT Ultra
4K/RT Ultra
*Based on Ultra High preset. | 2024 |
| Dragon's Dogma 2 | 1080p/Max
1440p/Max
4K/Max
*All settings maxed except for RT (this is not an in-game preset). | 2024 |
| (Ray Tracing) Dragon's Dogma 2 | 1080p/Max RT
1440p/Max RT
4K/Max RT
*All settings maxed (this is not an in-game preset). | 2024 |
| Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail Benchmark | 1080p/Maximum
1440p/Maximum
4K/Maximum | 2024 |
| Resident Evil 4 (2023) | 1080p/Prioritize Graphics
1440p/Prioritize Graphics
4K/Prioritize Graphics | 2023 |
| (Ray Tracing) Resident Evil 4 (2023) | 1080p/FSR Quality/Max RT
1440p/FSR Quality/Max RT
4K/FSR Quality/Max RT
*Based on "Maximum" preset. | 2023 |
| Baldur's Gate 3 | 1080p/DX11/Ultra-Custom
1440p/DX11/Ultra-Custom
4K/DX11/Ultra-Custom
*Custom settings. | 2023 |
| Starfield | 1080p/Ultra
1440p/Ultra
4K/Ultra | 2023 |
| Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty | 1080p/Ultra
1440p/Ultra
4K/Ultra | 2023 |
| (Ray Tracing) Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty | 1080p/RT Medium
1440p/RT Medium
4K/RT Medium
1080p/RT Ultra
1440p/RT Ultra
4K/RT Ultra
*Based on Ray Tracing: Ultra and Ray Tracing: Medium presets. | 2023 |
| Dying Light 2 Stay Human | 1080p/DX12/High-Custom
1440p/DX12/High-Custom
4K/DX12/High-Custom
*Based on "High" preset but with DX12 and associated features. | 2022 |
| (Ray Tracing) Dying Light 2 Stay Human | 1080p/DX12/FSR Quality/RT High Quality
1440p/DX12/FSR Quality/RT High Quality
4K/DX12/FSR Quality/RT High Quality
*Based on "High Quality Raytracing" preset. | 2022 |
| Total War: Warhammer III | 1080p/Ultra
1440p/Ultra
4K/Ultra | 2022 |
| NOTES | Dynamic resolution, upscaling, VSync, and VRS are disabled unless otherwise noted, even if they would normally be enabled by the in-game preset. RT features are disabled in tests not prefixed with (Ray Tracing). Games are run in exclusive fullscreen mode if available. | |
Our games list includes these. Not all of these will be shown in each review, but they are all tested. We’ve added Dragon’s Dogma 2 from 2024, Black Myth: Wukong from 2024, Baldur’s Gate 3 from 2023 -- which will be too easy for high-end GPUs, but is a good match for the B580, Starfield from 2023, Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail from 2024, Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty from 2023, and all the others you see above.
Cards Tested
| Card | Time Tested |
| NVIDIA RTX 4090 Cybertank | December, 2024 |
| AMD RX 7800 XT Ref | December, 2024 |
| EVGA RTX 3060 XC Black 12GB | December, 2024 |
| ASUS RTX 4060 Dual | December, 2024 |
| Intel Arc B580 Ref | December, 2024 |
| Sparkle Arc A580 Orc | December, 2024 |
| EVGA RTX 3050 XC Black 8GB | December, 2024 |
| XFX RX 6600 CORE | December, 2024 |
| PowerColor RX 6600 XT Red Devil | December, 2024 |
| XFX RX 6500 XT Black | December, 2024 |
| Sparkle Arc A750 Titan | December, 2024 |
| AMD RX 7600 Ref | December, 2024 |
| Acer Arc A770 BiFrost 16GB | December, 2024 |
| EVGA RTX 3060 Ti FTW3 | December, 2024 |
| XFX RX 6700 XT MERC Black | December, 2024 |
| NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti FE 8GB | December, 2024 |
| EVGA RTX 2060 KO | December, 2024 |
| EVGA GTX 1060 SSC 6GB | December, 2024 |
| XFX RX 7700 XT Black | December, 2024 |
| NVIDIA RTX 4070 FE | December, 2024 |
| Sapphire RX 7900 XTX Nitro | December, 2024 |
| EVGA GTX 1070 SC | December, 2024 |
| Sparkle Arc A380 Elf | December, 2024 |
| Colorful RTX 3070 BiliBili | December, 2024 |
| EVGA GTX 1650 SC Ultra Gaming | December, 2024 |
We’ve tested about 25 GPUs for this launch. That list does not include the RTX 4080, 4080 Super, 4070 Ti or Super, 7900 XT or GRE, and similar high-end cards. You can find scaling data in our prior benchmarks for those.
We added the 7900 XTX and RTX 4090 for a ceiling.
The reason for the cuts is time -- rolling into the end of year with team scheduling and our own travel, we wanted to allocate more testing time to older hardware or lower-end stuff to represent users considering an upgrade. That means we cut the high-end stuff for the GTX 1060 (watch our revisit), 1070 (watch our review), RTX 2060 (watch our review), GTX 1650 (watch our review), and similar cards. We’ll add higher-end GPUs in for the January launches, but they’re out of the price range of the B580.
As far as cards with multiple VRAM configurations, we ran the “default” or first-launched VRAM configuration wherever an option was present.
Finally on the test bench side, we’ve added power efficiency testing and idle power consumption testing with calibrated tools.
We have a lot more to test, but this article is huge already and we have a busy time ahead of us with some travel.
Let’s get into the benchmarks.
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B580 Gaming Benchmarks
FFXIV - 4K
Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail is up now at 4K first.
At 4K, the Intel Arc B580 ran at 47 FPS AVG, with lows exceptionally close to the average. The B580 has a staggering lead of 28.6% over the RTX 4060, which is elevated as compared to its lead at 1440p and 1080p. The RTX 4060 (watch our review) is behind in lows also; although they remain consistent with its average.
The B580 also leads the RTX 4060 Ti at 15% ahead, the A770 by 16.5%, A750 by an impressive 27.9%. The RX 7600 is around the same price as the B580, but struggles at 4K in this test at 31.5 FPS AVG.
Users of the GTX 1060 6GB card would experience an uplift of about 193% moving to the B580, with the 1070 seeing 110% and the 3050 similar.
As we saw in our 4060 review, the 3060 Ti (watch our review) has a massive memory bandwidth advantage over its successors and embarrasses the 4060 and 4060 Ti cards here.
From what we’ve tested lately that’s better than the B580. That list includes the $450-$480 7800 XT at 22% better and the RTX 4070 non-Super at 27% better, among the flagships.
FFXIV - 1440p
At 1440p, the gap narrows in some places. The B580 is running at a completely playable 86 FPS AVG with good lows. Its lead over lower cards has decreased: 3.4% against the 4060 Ti (watch our review), 9% against the A770 (down from 16.5%), 19% over the A750 and RTX 4060 (from around 28% before), and 31% over the RX 7600 (watch our review).
The RX 7800 XT jumps to 40% from 22% and the 4070 jumps to 36% from 27%. The $400 RX 7700 XT (watch our review) leads at 98 FPS to 86 FPS AVG on the B580, but is more expensive.
The B580 looks good here despite a reduction in its lead from 4K.
FFXIV - 1080p
1080p squishes everything together and reduces the B580’s advantage.
The B580 at 124 FPS AVG is now just 10 FPS ahead of the A770 and RTX 4060, or about 10%. The B580 went from a 28.6% lead at 4K to 19% at 1440p to 10% over the RTX 4060.
At 1440p, the RX 6700 XT (watch our review) was marginally below the B580 and is now ahead at 1080p. The B580 also had nearly a 15% lead over the RTX 4060 Ti at 4K, but now is behind. The 4060 Ti leads at 133 FPS, or an advantage of 7.6%. That’s a huge swing.
Starfield - 1440p
Starfield is up now, tested at 1440p.
The B580 isn’t as strong in this one as it was elsewhere. Starfield is also a game that was not functional on Arc at its launch, so running at all is already better than last time -- though that’s a low bar.
The B580 ends up behind the RX 7600, RTX 4060, and 4060 Ti in this benchmark. It’s beating the A770, A750, and A580 cards from Intel’s last gen.
The 4060 leads by about 17%, with the 4060 Ti in an insurmountable 42% lead. The 7600 is closer, at 5% ahead.
The biggest downside here is the frametime pacing. Intel’s B580 struggles with 0.1% lows and 1% lows, which are indicative of a deeper per-frame problem that requires a frametime plot to investigate. We’ll explore that later in this review, closer to the conclusion.
Starfield - 1080p
At 1080p, the B580 ran at 51 FPS AVG, giving the RTX 4060 a 10 FPS AVG lead, but an even bigger lead in lows. Although the 4060 has an advantage of 21% in average framerate, the real difference is in frametime pacing that we’ll see closer at the end of this review.
The RX 7600’s lead is now 4%, with the 4060 Ti at 44%.
Intel’s B580 leads the A770 by an impressive generational 16%, despite a lower core count configuration. That’s a huge win for Intel over its own hardware. Its lead over the A750 is 27%. Despite these gains, the B580 is not that competitive in Starfield.
Resident Evil 4 - 4K
Resident Evil at 4K is pretty interesting. The B580 roughly matches the 4060 Ti, with a marginal deficit on 0.1% lows. The lead over the 4060 is massive, benefiting the B580 by 31% in average FPS. It also holds an advantage in lows. The lead over the 7600 is 24%, with the generational lead over the A580 and A750 alike impressive.
This is a strong showing for Intel’s B580.
Resident Evil 4 - 1440p
At 1440p, the B580 maintains a competitive position: The card is fully playable at 85 FPS AVG with overall OK lows, albeit lower proportionally versus the neighboring A770 and RTX 3060 Ti. With the resolution drop, the 4060 Ti now leads the B580 by 7% from its rough equivalence before. B580 benefits from its memory bandwidth at 4K.
The lead over the RTX 4060 is reduced to a still-noteworthy 22.5%, down from 31%. The 7600 lead is reduced from 24% at 4K to 18% at 1440p.
Resident Evil 4 - 1080p
1080p weakens the B580’s position overall. The 4060 Ti now moves to 10% ahead. The B580’s lead over the 4060 is reduced to 19%, although this is still a big lead. Most notably though, we see the frametimes deviate more from the average: The 128 FPS AVG is accompanied by 74 FPS and 63 FPS 1% and 0.1% lows with the B580, whereas proportionally and based on neighbors, these figures should be in the 100-110 territory. The drop jumps out as different from the rest.
Baldur’s Gate 3 - 4K
Baldur’s Gate 3 is up now, one of the most played games in the last year. Intel needs to do well in these types of critically acclaimed titles. Last round, we saw that Intel did better with Vulkan in Baldur’s Gate 3 than it did with Dx11, but was still disadvantaged in both APIs.
With Dx11 and 4K/Ultra, the B580 ran at 45 FPS AVG. The lows are reduced versus its immediate neighbors in the 4060 and 7600, both of which would be better experiences by frametimes alone, despite all looking approximately equal in average FPS. This is another for our frametime charts list at the end.
The B580 improves on the A750 by 6% and the A580 by 21%, falling behind the A770 in this one. The Arc cards are generally less competitive in frametime consistency in this game; however, they have significantly improved in their performance from a year ago.
Baldur’s Gate 3 - 1440p
Here’s 1440p.
The B580 ran at 74 FPS AVG, which is completely playable in this game. The lows are also acceptable in an objective sense -- it’s not a “bad” experience, but it’s also not as good as you’d get for frametime pacing from the RTX 3060 (watch our review), RTX 4060, or RX 6600 XT (watch our review).
The 6600 XT’s average framerate holds a 14% lead, with the 4060 at 8% ahead, breaking rank from a roughly tied average at 4K. The 7600 also climbs ahead, now matching the 6600 XT rather than the B580 AVG FPS as we saw at 4K. The 4060 Ti is 35% ahead of the B580 with its 100 FPS AVG.
Generationally, Intel improves over the Alchemist A750 by 7%, with a notable leap over the 62 FPS AVG of the A580.
Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty - 1440p
In Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty at 1440p, the B580 performs overall well. This is one of Intel’s strongest titles.
At 1440p and with Ultra settings, without RT, the B580 lands at 53 FPS AVG in our in-game test within one of the cities. The B580 roughly matches the RTX 3070, although is lower in 0.1% lows and frametime consistency. The B580 leads the RTX 4060 in AVG FPS by 36%, the RX 7600 by a similarly large gulf, and the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB model by 12%. The 4060 Ti has stronger 0.1% lows, but not in a way which we think is worth the cost tradeoff.
Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty - 1080p
At 1080p, the B580 slips in the ranks below the 4060 Ti, which also carries a large advantage in 0.1% lows.
The B580 technically leads the RTX 4060 in AVG FPS by 18%, but the 4060 pulls ahead in overall frametime consistency. The RX 7600 is in a similar boat.
Black Myth: Wukong - 1080p
Black Myth: Wukong is next. This is one of the few games where we use the built-in benchmark. It’s new to our test suite and it’s been pretty consistent. Dropping settings would obviously increase framerate, but we’re interested in this from a scaling standpoint.
At High settings, broadly speaking, the B580 still has a slight deficit in lows, but a far less noticeable one than some other games. It’s close enough to the RX 7600 and RTX 3060 that the experience would feel overall similar, although technically worse by measurement.
The RTX 4060 holds a significant lead in this test, up at 19% and 54 FPS AVG to the 46 FPS on the B580. Frametime consistency is also better. The 3060 Ti leads the 4060 and B580, with the 4060 Ti at 65 FPS AVG, or 42% ahead of the B580.
The B580 at least improved on the last generation, at 29% over the A750, and 38% over the A580. Intel is making big generational strides against itself here.
Black Myth: Wukong - 1440p
At 1440p, we’re bordering on synthetic test territory for the B580. But what matters most to us is the scaling, not the raw FPS.
At 35 FPS AVG, the B580 allows the 4060 a lead of 6.6%, down from 19% at 1080p. This is a huge swing in favor of the B580, which continues to scale more favorably at higher resolutions.
The 7600 falls below the B580 in average FPS and is roughly the same in lows. The B580 also leads the prior generation flagship from Intel, the A770, which was at 30 FPS AVG. We’re going to pick up the speed here now that patterns are establishing.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 - 1440p
Dragon’s Dogma 2 is up next. For our CPU testing, we benchmark inside the city to create an NPC workload on the CPU. For GPU testing, we test outside of the city and in a GPU-heavy area with fields, water, and structures.
At 1440p, the B580 ran at 44 FPS AVG with good lows. The GPU does much better here than in some of the prior tests and ends up keeping pace with the RTX 4060. The 7600, 4060, and B580 are all functionally equivalent. The 3060 Ti (watch our review) benefits from its memory bandwidth and leads this grouping.
This is a much better positioning for the B580 than the prior games.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 - 1080p
At 1080p, things shake-up to knock the B580 loose from its rough equivalence with the RX 7600 and RTX 4060. Now, the RTX 4060 holds a 13% lead, with the RX 7600 in an 11% lead. The B580 retains overall typical frametime pacing, which is good for Arc. It manages to hang in there, but it’s seen some losses as the resolution comes down.
Dying Light 2 - 1440p
Dying Light 2 is next. This one looks good for Intel Arc, including frametime consistency: The B580 runs at 63 FPS AVG, which has it ahead of the 4060 Ti, 4060, and 7600. It’s also ahead of all of these devices in 1% and 0.1% lows, in what’s a major victory for Intel considering its challenges in some other games.
The B580 ends up between the RTX 3070 and RX 6700 XT. The $400 7700 XT holds a lead in AVG FPS of 12%, despite being 60% more expensive. This is one of the stronger showings for Intel.
Dying Light 2 - 1080p
At 1080p, the B580 continues its good performance by outmatching the A770 and RTX 4060; however, it loses ground to the 4060 Ti that it had outperformed at 1440p. The 87 FPS AVG is well into playable territory and carries good lows. The die size is much smaller than an A770, so outperforming it is key here: Intel may be able to reduce some of its cost per card, which will help it compete long-term.
Intel B580 Ray Tracing Benchmarks
We’re moving on to ray tracing benchmarks. These are not comparable to the rasterized charts.
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Ray Tracing: Resident Evil 4 - 4K
Resident Evil 4 is up first. This is a relatively light workload for ray tracing and isn’t as distorted for one vendor or another as some other games.
This first chart is at 4K with Max RT, but with FSR set to quality for all devices. We have validated other upscaling solutions and found their performance to be roughly identical, so matching for just FSR agnostically allows us to control for image quality as well. Because we are using FSR, it is not native resolution. We don’t use FSR in our rasterized tests.
Here’s the 4K chart. The B580 ends up directly competing with the RTX 4060 Ti in the average framerate and in frametime consistency, with lows overall indicative of a comparable frame-to-frame interval to the 4060 Ti. It’s not far off from the RTX 3070. Intel’s B580 leads the RTX 4060 by 21%, at 50 FPS to 41 FPS AVG. The improvement over the A750 is similar. We need to run the 7600 back through this one still, but the 7700 XT and 6600 XT give an idea for AMD’s positioning.
Ray Tracing: Resident Evil 4 - 1440p
In this test, the Intel B580 runs at 75 FPS AVG with overall good lows. The 1% and 0.1% metrics are similar to what we see on the 3060 Ti, which outperforms the B580. Intel’s B580 manages to outperform the RTX 4060 by 6%, including proportional frametimes. It also outperforms the A770’s 71 FPS AVG, which was already relatively good for RT. AMD’s RX 7600 ran at 65 FPS AVG, giving the B580 nearly a 16% advantage while costing about the same.
The 4060 Ti’s 91 FPS result outdoes the B580’s 75 FPS by 21%, including scaling in the lows. The 7700 XT pushes further ahead, up to 106 FPS AVG. Both devices cost about 60% more than the B580, at around $400 for the 4060 Ti 8GB and 7700 XT alike.
Ray Tracing: Resident Evil 4 - 1080p
At 1080p and with the same FSR and RT settings, Resident Evil 4 positions the B580 now below the RTX 4060 -- though they’re functionally tied. It’s losing the advantage that we’ve now proven it typically has at higher resolutions. These two and the RX 7600 are closest in price, with the 7600 down at 85 FPS AVG and allowing the B580 a slight lead of 9%.
The 4060 Ti leads the B580 by 29%, with the 7700 XT 40% ahead of Battlemage.
Overall, Intel’s performance in this lighter RT test is competitive, especially for the price and in comparison to AMD.
Ray Tracing: Dying Light 2 - 1080p
Dying Light 2 is a heavier RT workload and is tested with FSR Quality.
At 1080p, the B580 ran at 65 FPS AVG and held consistent frametimes. It’s a little better than the A770 and similar in average to the 3060 Ti. The 4060 Ti leads the B580 with its 73 FPS AVG result, a gain of 12%. The B580 leads the 4060 by 13%. AMD falls behind in this test, with the 6700 XT now below the B580 and RTX 4060. The B580 ends up with nearly a 30% lead over the 6700 XT, which is a precarious spot for AMD. The lead over the RX 7600’s 45 FPS AVG is 44%.
Ray Tracing: Dragon’s Dogma 2 - 1080p
In Dragon’s Dogma 2 with Max RT and no upscaling, the B580 ran at 44 FPS AVG with lows slightly lower than where they should be. The A770 leads the B580 in lows and ties in the average.
AMD’s RX 7600 does better here than in Cyberpunk and Black Myth, up at 53 FPS AVG and outranking the B580 by 20%. The RTX 4060 also outdoes the B580 (and also outperforms the 7600’s frametime pacing), landing at 54 FPS AVG.
Battlemage is doing OK, but does not have the same advantage it has elsewhere.
Ray Tracing: Dragon’s Dogma 2 - 1440p
At 1440p and RT with Dragon’s Dogma 2, the B580 ran at 36 FPS AVG and had dips in lows compared to the neighboring prior-generation A-series GPUs. The 7600 leads the card now by about 10%, reducing its lead from at 1080p. The RTX 4060 is in a similar position, but with better lows.
Ray Tracing: Cyberpunk - 1080p Medium
Cyberpunk with Medium RT settings is less brutal on AMD than Ultra, something we showed in our last round of reviews, but remains one of the heaviest RT loads and disproportionately hard on AMD devices. This is tested without any upscaling.
The B580 did overall well here: Its average framerate was competitive with the RTX 3060 Ti, despite lower 0.1% lows than it. The 4060 struggles in this one with frametime pacing and is erratic and unpredictable with these settings. The B580 is a much better experience, with the 3060 Ti and up better still. The 4060 Ti also struggles with frametime consistency, illustrated by the 0.1% lows that draw our attention to the problem. This appears to be an issue with memory bandwidth, especially as contrasted to the 3060 Ti, which likely compounds with the VRAM capacity.
In a massive loss for AMD, the B580 runs 62% ahead of its RX 7600 in average framerate while also maintaining superior lows and frametime pacing. AMD’s closest card is the RX 7700 XT, which is significantly more expensive. This is a repeat of what we saw with the Alchemist cards last time, where the A770 and A750 alike outperformed AMD’s 6700 XT and 7600.
We tried testing RT Ultra for Cyberpunk, but unfortunately, the system hard locked with the B580 card. This behavior did not occur on any of the other 18 plus devices we tested with these settings and appears to be related to Battlemage.
Ray Tracing: Black Myth Wukong - 1080p (Experimental)
Black Myth: Wukong is up next.
This is an experimental chart, which means we are still researching the performance and vetting it. Our confidence is lower in data for experimental charts, which means they should be weighted less; however, we publish them when we feel we are ready to begin sharing, as this allows us to continue learning and advancing. We just like to be clear in our disclosures of data confidence.
This one is brutal on anything that isn’t NVIDIA. Intel also had a last-minute driver update for RT performance in this game.
At 1080p and with FSR set to quality, using high raster settings and medium RT settings, the B580 ran at 34 FPS AVG, with lows where they should be. Intel’s last-minute driver change did nothing to our results -- they were nearly identical, so we’re just showing one set here. The B580 ranks alongside the RX 7800 XT (watch our review), as AMD has serious difficulties with this game. Wukong is similar in performance to Cyberpunk in its performance characteristics on AMD, where even a 4060 outperforms a 7900 XTX.
For Intel, it at least is doing better comparatively than AMD, but NVIDIA has a stranglehold here.
Frametime Consistency Inspection
We’ll move to some quick zoomed-in shots of the frametime charts for some good and bad scenarios for the B580.
Frametime Consistency: Baldur’s Gate 3 (4K)
We’ll start with Baldur’s Gate 3 at 4K. This chart shows the frame-to-frame interval on the vertical axis and the frame on the horizontal axis.
Lower is better, more consistent is best. Although the B580 is at times lower than the RTX 4060, the card experiences occasional but massive excursions from the previous frame. We’re seeing some jumps upwards of 20ms, which is noticeable, but not necessarily game-breaking -- it depends on the frequency of them. In this case, you’d notice. Arc has improved substantially from Alchemist in this specific regard, but it’s clear that Intel still has some work to do in at least Dx11 with this game.
Frametime Consistency: Dying Light 2 (1440p)
Dying Light 2 rasterized is one of the better scenarios for Arc, so we’ll balance by also looking at that as well.
In this one, the B580 had better frametimes across the entire bench pass. It’s lower overall, but also doesn’t experience any major unexpected deviations. Unlike the Baldur’s Gate chart, the B580 GPU is exceptionally consistent in its frametime pacing here. The 4060 ends up the worse of the two tested devices.
Frametime Consistency: Phantom Liberty RT (1080p)
In this next one, NVIDIA and its RTX 4060 are a victim of its own creation. In Cyberpunk with RT Medium, the RTX 4060’s framebuffer and memory bandwidth cause it to struggle, resulting in frametime spikes that, in one case in this chart, exceed 120ms. That’s 1/10th a second that you’re looking at the same frame. This massive spike would result in a stutter in-game. These stutters were repeatable during play. There’s another large spike later in the run. They also happen frequently in our later runs.
The B580 did not exhibit this behavior in this test and would be a better experience. Intel’s memory choices benefit the company here; bandwidth is one of them but capacity also contributes.
Frametime Consistency: Starfield
Starfield had some major consistency issues run-to-run for Intel so we’re actually only showing Intel here.
This shows 2 test passes from Starfield at 1080p for the B580. In this one, you’re seeing wildly inconsistent frame pacing with a total range from 13ms to 53ms. There’s no pattern to it and frame delivery is overall erratic, making the experience less consistent and allowing more microstutter behaviors to emerge. Dying Light 2 looked much better for Battlemage.
Frametime Consistency: FFXIV 1440p
Final Fantasy 14 is next. In this one, B580 did well overall but had slightly reduced 0.1% lows versus the 3060 Ti and 6700 XT; however, it did better than the RTX 4060 across the board. In the frametime chart for Final Fantasy, we see an incredibly flat line with only one major spike that would hardly be noticeable since it isn’t repeating.
Let’s move on to efficiency.
Intel B580 Power Consumption & Efficiency (Experimental)
Now, we’re getting into power consumption and power efficiency measurements. For this testing, we’re using a PMD2 hooked into a PCIe slot interposer and the PCIe cables. This PMD2 has been personally calibrated by Elmor, from ElmorLabs, for our work upon request and has been validated against other measurement devices, including current clamps. We are isolating for just GPU power, eliminating other test bench power draw. This allows us a clean and isolated feed of GPU behavior.
We haven’t yet tested our full lineup of GPUs as this is all brand new testing, so we only have some of the most relevant cards. You’ll have to check back as we add more.
Power Consumption: Idle
This chart is for idle power draw on Windows desktop and without any GPU tasks active.
The Intel B580 pulled about 35W when idle at desktop, which is a lot less than the Alchemist GPUs pulled (up at 46W, 45W, and 43W), but it’s still more than everything else. Intel still has an idle power consumption challenge to overcome.
The RX 6600 (watch our review), for example, pulled only 5W through the PCIe slot and PCIe cables when idle, which is impressive. The 6600 XT was similar, at 6.2W. The 4060 is a relevant comparison and far lower in power consumption idle, down at 11W to the B580’s 35W or so.
This is an area Intel will eventually need to improve, but no one will care about its idle power draw if the performance isn’t good enough to warrant a purchase first, so we’ll see if this improves subsequently.
Idle GPU power has been requested by our audience for years, so we’re happy to finally start delivering it with this first look.
Efficiency: Baldur’s Gate 3 (1440p)
The next chart is for Baldur’s Gate 3 efficiency at 1440p, looking at rasterization performance. This is measured in FPS/W, which can be thought of as frames per joule since it’s just frames per second per joules per second. Higher is more efficient here.
FPS/W is easier to understand for most people. In this test, the RTX 4060 Ti has the best FPS/W performance, up at 0.71. The 4060 Ti is about 37% more efficient, meaning its FPS/W score is 37% higher than the Intel B580. This is still a massive generational improvement for Intel, where its A580 previously was way down at 0.31. The B580 scores 68% higher in FPS/W than the A580 and A750. Its total power draw is about 141W here, the same as the 4060 Ti, and so the reason its FPS/W is lower is because its framerate is simply lower.
The 4060 pulls 126W in this test and has a slightly higher framerate, benefiting on both sides of the equation. We don’t yet have the RX 7600 in this lineup.
Efficiency: FFXIV (1440p)
Now we’ll look at one of the B580’s best case scenarios to balance the last two.
This chart is for Final Fantasy 14 at 1440p, where it did well. The B580 ends up 4th on our list so far at 0.51 FPS/W, ahead of the 7800 XT and behind the 4060.
The RTX 4060 pulled 124W here, putting it at 0.58 FPS/W and almost 14% more efficient than the B580. That’s a good spot for the B580, despite being less efficient and pulling more power at 170W.
The 4060 Ti pulled just 129W, so it didn’t leverage its total power budget, and was 27% more efficient than the B580.
Against the last generation, the B580 is significantly more efficient than the RX 6600 XT, RX 6600, RTX 3060 Ti, and Intel’s own Arc cards. The jump over the A750 is huge, especially since the Titan model has a boosted power budget.
Efficiency: FFXIV (1080p)
At 1080p, the 4090 and 4060 Ti appear the same because the 4090 (watch our review) is completely CPU-bound. It can’t perform any better, but remains in a higher power draw state.
The B580 again ranks as less efficient than the 4060 and more efficient than the 7800 XT and below. The B580 pulled 161W here.
Efficiency: Black Myth Wukong (1080p)
In Black Myth: Wukong at 1080p and without ray tracing, the B580 scored 0.3 FPS/W and pulled 146W, which has it significantly behind the RTX 4060 at 0.4 FPS/W and 121W. The 4090 would rank higher if it could fully stretch its legs.
The B580 is about equal to the 7800 XT again.
Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty (RT, 1080p)
In Phantom Liberty with Ray Tracing and at 1080p, the B580 manages to hold onto its 4th place positioning in our current limited lineup. The lead over the 7800 XT is now a massive 29%, thanks to AMD’s performance issues in this title. The 4060 maintains an advantage of 15% over the B580. What’s clear is that Intel has drastically improved on its A-series performance.
Intel B580 Conclusion
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Intel Battlemage is way better than our experiences with Alchemist. The launch of the A380 and subsequent A750 and A770 cards was plagued with experience-ruining bugs that were unfixable in many cases. This time around, we ran into a couple driver issues, but the only one that completely prevented play was an issue with Cyberpunk and RT Ultra settings, where it’d hard crash. Everything else ran more or less without issue.
This review is long already, so we’ll keep it simple. Here are the key points:
- We observed that the B580 scales well as resolution increases, especially at 4K and the games that aren’t heavy enough to eliminate it as an option. Unfortunately, the card isn’t so powerful that 4K is playable in a lot of these games, but the behavior was consistent with 1440p as well. 1080p saw a loss of advantage or sometimes a flip with the RTX 4060 or RX 7600.
- Intel’s frametimes are overall much better and mostly avoid experience-ruining issues in almost all cases. The Battlemage drivers still have some frametime pacing problems in some games and tests and are not overall superior, but have improved enough that, in combination with a low enough price point at $250 and below, they could be overlooked depending on the games you play.
- Also as a downside, Intel’s idle power consumption remains high. It has improved massively, but is higher than everyone else at idle for the most part.
- Intel’s efficiency in actual gaming scenarios, at least when those games perform well for it, has improved massively and is competitive with the RX 7800 XT and RTX 4060 in some scenarios.
As the A750 went on massive fire sales previously, we’d sometimes recommend it with heavy caveating. The main one was that we never felt comfortable recommending it for the general mainstream audience as we feared users without troubleshooting experience (or even those who have it, but don’t have secondary GPUs) would find it frustrating when encountering games that simply don’t work. Starfield, for example, just didn’t work at launch on Arc.
Battlemage has improved on this front. We feel much more comfortable recommending at large. However, we still have one major caveat, which is that this is still only the second true generation of Intel’s modern dGPUs. We fully anticipate that Battlemage will have issues given the thousands of games and millions of hardware and software combinations, and we can’t possibly vet them all. That’s why it’s important to check other reviews. We can only speak for our experiences: In the games we tested and with our software, we encountered only one game-breaking bug, and that was RT Ultra in Cyberpunk, which is likely not particularly playable anyway. It is a valid issue, though. We also had one system hard reset at some point.
Now, on NVIDIA and AMD, such issues would almost never happen at this point. On Intel, this is an improvement from dozens of problems with the Alchemist launch. The issues were so many that we published a bug report detailing over 30 major problems.
The B580 poses considerable value as compared to the RTX 4060 and RX 7600. It is not always the best and trades with these cards, but is a serious competitor. You have all the numbers. We’d recommend looking through our results and determining if it’s a good fit for your games, but overall, Intel’s improvement is obvious.
The next big thing will be seeing what happens in January with Intel’s competitors.
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