This is the news that shakes the world of PC gaming. Intel has just made its new generation of Battlemage graphics cards official. Two models are announced: the Arc B580 and Arc B570, sold for $249 and $219 respectively. Prices that make the competition pale, in particular Nvidia whose RTX 4060 is priced at $299. But price is not Intel’s only argument.
Performance that exceeds expectations
The star of this announcement, the Arc B580, impresses with its technical sheet. With its 20 Xe cores, 20 ray tracing units and 160 XMX AI engines, it promises 10% better performance than the RTX 4060 at 1440p. Intel hasn’t skimped on memory either: 12 GB GDDR6 with 192-bit interfacei.e. a bandwidth much greater than that of the RTX 4060 T and its 8 GB of VRAM.
The manufacturer places particular emphasis on ray tracing performance. On Forza Motorsport for example, the B580 displays 64% higher framerates than the RTX 4060 with Ultra RT settings. A difference which is explained in particular by the revised architecture of the RT engines, offering up to twice more performance than the previous generation on certain operations.
Perfect timing to shake up the market
Intel arrives at the right time in a segment neglected by the competition. The RTX 3060 Ti, once the queen of affordable 1440p gaming, never really found a successor. The RTX 4060 Ti, restricted by its memory interface, struggles to convince despite its price of $399. AMD is not doing much better with its RX 7600 XT.
Intel’s new GPUs could fill this void. The B580 and B570 arrive with technical characteristics adapted to 1440p gaming, a resolution increasingly popular among PC gamers. All at prices reminiscent of the pre-shortage era, when graphics cards remained accessible to as many people as possible.
A gradual rise in power from Intel
This announcement marks an important step in Intel’s strategy in the graphics card market. The Battlemage architecture, which succeeds Alchemist, brings its share of improvements: better efficiency, optimized use of graphics cores and increased performance in ray tracing and AI. Intel also introduces XeSS 2its upscaling technology competing with Nvidia’s DLSS.
Manufacturers Acer, ASRock, Gunnir, Maxsun, Onix and Sparkle will offer their customized versions of the B580 and B570. The B580 will be available from December 13, 2024, followed by the B570 on January 16, 2025. A relatively short launch window before the probable arrival of Nvidia’s RTX 5000, but which could be enough for Intel to establish itself in the mid-range segment. It remains to see the benchmarks from the specialized press in order to verify whether Intel respects all its promises here.
- Intel launches two affordable graphics cards: the B580 at $249 and the B570 at $219, with no French price announced yet
- B580 outperforms RTX 4060 by 10% at 1440p with impressive ray tracing performance
- Availability expected from December 2024, with customized versions from several manufacturers
