Intel entered the discrete graphics card market two years ago with its Alchemist architecture. The launch was highly anticipated, as the company entered a market dominated by NVIDIA and AMD for decades. But not everything went as planned.
Intel's Arc A-series "Alchemist" graphics cards launched after much delay & even a delayed launch couldn't help the blue team's case as it was plagued with severe driver issues, software problems, and general gaming issues. This left a sour note in the minds of folks who had been waiting to see what Intel had to offer.
Following the launch, there were several rumors that Intel would eventually cancel its discrete graphics card lineup but one good thing that came out of the GPU division was the software team which worked day and night to optimize applications and games. The Fine Wine story for Intel has been witnessed by our very eyes and Arc also saw some significant price drops in the coming months approaching the sub $300 US segment with 16 GB of VRAM.
But despite all of that, the competition went on to release their next-gen offerings. This time, Intel was the first in line to offer a next-gen product ahead of the mainstream launches from NVIDIA & AMD, which are now out. Meet the 2nd Generation Arc family, codenamed Battlemage or the B-Series.
The Intel Arc Battlemage lineup addresses the most significant problems within the first-gen Arc architecture, all the while focusing on enhanced support for modern APIs and a range of new features. For today's review, we will be checking out the Maxsun Arc B580 iCraft graphics card, which comes in for $275 US, or $25 US above the official MSRP.
At ITT 2024, Intel squashed all rumors around the cancellation or delay of its GPU and Arc lineup. Tom Petersen gave one of the most charged presentations during the event, which was centered around the next-generation Xe2 architecture. Starting with the details, Intel is making things simpler, and instead of using LP, LPG, HP, and HPG naming schemes, the company is simply calling its next-gen lineup Xe2. Internally, these chips will still feature these codenames, but they won't be used for the client side anymore.
Some of the goals with Xe2 for Intel were to achieve higher utilization, improved work distribution, and less software overhead. It is a design from the ground up and has fixed several major issues that were noticed with Xe "Alchemist" GPUs. Right off the bat, Intel wowed the audiences with an IP performance efficiency chart that shows gains of up to 12.5x, which are quite significant, and we have this deep dive to showcase what Xe2 is and how Intel is achieving these gains.
Intel states that the Xe2 architecture, just like Xe, is highly scalable, which will lead to its integration within low-power mobile SOCs such as Lunar Lake and up to higher-end Arc graphics cards with discrete options that come out later.
Intel Xe2 Architectural Deep-Dive
So, beginning our deep dive, the second-generation Xe core, or Xe2, comes with several compute resources that are repartitioned into native SIMD16 engines for increased efficiency.
The Xe2 core features:
- 8 512-bit Vector Engines
- 8 2048-bit XMX Engines
- 64-bit atomic ops support
- 192KB Shared L1$/SLM
The Vector Engine has also been updated, which includes:
- SIMD16 native ALUs - Support for SIMD16 and SIMD32 ops
- Xe Matrix Extensions (Support for INT2, INT4, INT8, FP16, BF16)
- Extended Math & FP64 - Transcendentals: SIN, COS, LOG, EXP
- 3-way co-issue - FP + INT/EM + XMX
The Xe Matrix Engines or XMX units were also present on Alchemist "Xe" GPUs, but what has changed now is that they support more data types and run much faster with FP16 rated at 2048 OPS/clock & INT8 rated at 4096 OPS/clock.
With those two out of the way, let's see how these new engines stack within the Xe2 render slice, which are the fundamental blocks of the Xe2 GPU. These Render slices can be stacked and scaled as needed and are optimized to reduce latency, remove stalls, and improve HW/SW handshake. These Render Slices are connected to a Command Front End that natively supports Execute Indirect.
The render slice also includes a new Geometry engine with 3x vertex fetch throughput and 3x mesh shading performance (with vertex re-use), new L1$/SLM cache for out-of-order sampling (with compressed textures), 2x throughput for sampling without filtering & Programmable offsets, a new HiZ unit which has 50% more cache and supports Early HiZ culling of small primitives. Lastly, there are two new Pixel Backends which offer twice the blending throughput, a 33% increase in pixel color cache, and render the target pre-fetch to L2$.
Xe2's Latest Ray Tracing Unit Improves Upon Xe1
A major block of the Xe2 core is its RTU (Ray Tracing Unit), which features 3 traversal pipelines, 18 box intersections (6 per Box intersection & 3 boxes per RTU), and 2 triangle intersections.
So that's the low-level summary of Intel's Xe2 GPU architecture, which offers:
- 2nd Gen Xe2 Cores
- Enhanced Vector Engines
- Deeper Caches
- New XMX Engines
- Performance & Efficiency - Optimized front-end
- Native hardware support for executing indirect commands
- Larger Ray Tracing Units
Overall, Intel's Xe2 GPU architecture is designed to be more compatible with games and achieve higher utilization. The new Execute Indirect block is used by games to accelerate draw calls, and gaining a 12.5x jump bodes well for gamers since it is used by engines such as Unreal Engine a lot.
Intel Lunar Lake Gets The First Xe2 GPU IP, Full Deep-Dive of Integrated Xe2
The first product to feature Xe2 GPUs is Lunar Lake and it comes in the integrated configuration. Several blocks within Lunar Lake are tied to the GPU such as the Media Engine and the Display Engine.
Before we get into those, let's talk about the Xe2 configuration for Lunar Lake:
- 8 Xe2 Cores
- 64 Vector Engines
- 2 Geometry Pipelines
- 8 Samplers
- 4 Pixel backends
- 8 ray-tracing units
- 8 MB L2$
The Lunar Lake Xe2 GPU features 8 Xe2 cores, and each Xe2 core has 8 XMX and 8 Vector units, a Load/Store unit, a Thread Sorting Unit, and a dedicated L1/L$ cache. Each of these four Xe2 cores makes a single Render Slice.
So, how does this all scale in terms of performance compared to Meteor Lake's Xe GPU? Intel states that the Xe2 GPUs achieved 50% higher performance at ISO and significantly lower power with the same performance.
The XMX block is also a significant portion that sees the influx of 67 peak INT8 TOPS, which adds to the overall AI prowess offered by the Lunar Lake CPUs. The chip in total offers 120 platform TOPS, which include 48 TOPS from the NPU4 and 5 TOPS from the CPU itself.
Xe Display Engine For Lunar Lake
Now we shift from the GPU to the other blocks on the Lunar Lake CPU itself, starting with the Display Engine. The Display Engine comes with 3 Display Pipes with up to 8K60 HDR support, up to 3x 4K60 HDR support, and up to 1080p360 or 1440p360 support. The display engine supports HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 2.1, and the new eDP 1.5 capabilities.
The front end of the Display Engine includes Decode/Decrypt and a Streaming Buffer Zone. For the pixel processing pipeline, you are getting 6 planes per pipeline with hardware support for color conversion and composition while being flexible & power efficient.
There's also an additional Low-Power optimized pipeline with Panel Replay (power gating during idle frames) and a new Brightness sensor with LACE (Local Adaptive Contrast Enhancement). On the compression and encoding side, you get a display stream compression engine with 31 visually lossless compressions and transport encoding (stream encode for HDMI and DisplayPort protocols). Router and Ports include Stream assembly and Port Routing, with up to 4 ports supported for added flexibility.
Coming back to eDP (eDisplayPort) 1.5 with Panel Replay, it's being referred to as an evolution of panel self-refresh with selective updates, with early transport and adaptive sync support. The new display capability offers reduced Judder and improved playback while offering higher power efficiency.
Xe Media Engine For Lunar Lake - VVC Support, Side-Cache & Better Encoding
The last block of the Lunar Lake SOC that is connected to the Xe2 GPU is the Media Engine, which now comes with its own dedicated 8 MB of shared side cache. This new cache can be used by the rest of the chip, but there's no need for it since the rest of the cores have a dedicated cache themselves.
This side cache allows Lunar Lake a lot of bandwidth savings since there's reduced traffic to system memory across media workloads. This also allows significant power reductions for encode workloads.
Diving into the Media Engine, it supports up to 8k60 10-bit HDR decode, up to 8k60 10-bit HDR encode, AVC, VP9, H.265 HEVC, AV1, and a brand new VVC engine. The VVC engine significantly reduces bitrate while delivering the same quality as AV1 (up to 10% file size reduction). It also supports Adaptive Resolution Streaming and Screen Content Coding.
And lastly, we have the Windows GPU software stack, which is ready for Xe2 GPUs. Intel said that it spent a lot of time tuning the API-level performance of its Alchemist "Xe" GPUs, especially DX9, but all of that software work is moving over to Xe2 with support for all the latest APIs and Frameworks along with their runtimes.
That wraps things up for Xe2, a brand new graphics architecture that brings huge performance improvements, the latest feature sets, and a lot more to both integrated solutions, such as Lunar Lake, and discrete options with the upcoming Arc Battlemage lineup.
Starting with the details of the Xe2-based BMG-G21 SoC, the chip features a maximum of five render slices, which include four Xe2 cores each for a total of 20 Xe2 cores. Each Xe2 core has 8 512-bit vector engines, 8 2048-bit XMX engines, 64b atomic ops support, and an upgraded 256KB L1$/SLM cache. The Xe2 cores also include a dedicated RT (Ray Tracing) unit, and each render slice carries four Samplers, Geometry, Rasterizer, HiZ, and two Pixel Backend blocks.
The BMG-G21 SoC measures 272mm2 and features a total of 19.6 million transistors, making it 33% smaller than the Alchemist ACM-G10 die, which featured 21.7 million transistors. The chip itself has been fabricated on the TSMC 5nm (N5) process node.
According to Intel, the Battlemage BMG-G21 discrete GPU offers an incredible 70% performance improvement per Xe core and a 50% performance per watt uplift versus the prior generation. The updated Xe2 IP leads to lower execution time versus the Alchemist architecture, allowing for better utilization of the silicon and faster performance than its predecessors. So, with the architecture bits out of the way, let's start with the hardware.
Today, Intel is announcing two variants of its Battlemage B-Series lineup, the Arc B580 and the Arc B570. Both of these chips are based on the same BMG-G21 SoC with slightly different specs & price points.
Intel Arc B580 GPU Specifications - 20 Xe2 Cores & 12 GB VRAM
The Intel Arc B580 graphics card is the top offering for now, with up to 20 Xe2 cores packed in 5 render slices with 20 RT units, 160 XMX AI Engines, and a clock speed of up to 2670 MHz. The card includes 12 GB of GDDR6 memory running across a 192-bit interface and offers a bandwidth of up to 456 GB/s.
The card has a peak TBP of 190W and is powered by a single 8-pin connector and uses a PCIe 4.0 x8 interface. The GPU supports all the latest HW acceleration engines such as AV1, HEVC, AVC, VP9, and XAVC-H and comes with three DP2.1 (UHBR13.5) & one HDMI 2.1 output.
Intel Arc B570 GPU Specifications - 18 Xe2 Cores & 10 GB VRAM
The second card is the Intel Arc B570, which features 18 Xe2 cores with 5 render slices, 18 RT units, 144 XMX AI Engines, a clock speed of up to 2500 MHz, 10 GB of GDDR6 memory running across a 160-bit interface, and a peak bandwidth of 380 GB/s. The card comes with a 150W TBP and has the same connectivity specs as the B580.
Intel Arc B580 & B570 "Battlemage" GPU Performance
In terms of performance, the Intel Arc B580 is claimed to be 24% faster than the Arc A750 on average, which is a decent uplift considering the Arc A750 was priced at the same $249 price. Meanwhile, compared to the competition, the Intel Arc B580 is said to be 10% faster than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060, which sells for around $50 US more while featuring 8 GB VRAM.
Other comparative points made by Intel include a look at both raster and ray tracing performance versus the competition from NVIDIA (RTX 4060) and AMD (RX 7600). The Arc B580 offers up to 32% faster rasterization performance at a lower price point while delivering faster RT performance than the competition.
The extra VRAM does help Intel's case of marketing this as a 1440p card. With 10+ GB VRAM, the Arc B580 and B570 graphics cards can enable faster performance when running at higher texture quality or RT quality. Intel's offering of higher VRAM to gamers at mainstream prices is a solid move to attract the gaming masses who have been waiting to upgrade to higher VRAM options in the sub-$250 US segment.
Arc B580 For $249 & Arc B570 For $219
As for availability, the Intel Arc B580 will retail for $249 US on the 13th of December with various options to select from, including a Limited Edition flavor, while the Intel Arc B570 will be available starting 16th January 2025 for $219 US on a wide variety of custom models.
The Intel Arc B580 "Battlemage" Limited Edition graphics card features a brand new cooling and shroud design with a dual-slot and dual-fan form factor, offering solid performance outside the box, increased airflow, and whisper-quiet operation while offering overclocking capabilities beyond 3 GHz.
Intel Arc Battlemage GPU Lineup
| GPU Name | Arc B580 | Arc B570 |
|---|---|---|
| Family | Battlemage B-Series | Battlemage B-Series |
| Process | TSMC 5nm | TSMC 5nm |
| Die | 272mm2 | 272mm2 |
| Transistors | 19.6 Million | 19.6 Million |
| Cores | 20 Xe2 | 18 Xe2 |
| RT Units | 20 RTU | 18 RTU |
| XMX Engines | 160 | 144 |
| Clock Speed | 2670 MHz | 2500 MHz |
| VRAM | 12 GB GDDR6 | 10 GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Bus | 192-bit | 160-bit |
| Bandwidth | 456 GB/s | 380 GB/s |
| TBP | 190W | 150W |
| Connector | 1x 8-Pin | 1x 8-Pin |
| Interface | PCIe 4.0 x8 | PCIe 4.0 x8 |
| Price | $249 | $219 |
| Launch | 13th December 2024 | 16th January 2025 |
The Maxsun Intel Arc B580 iCraft graphics card comes inside a standard cardboard box. The front of the package has a large "Intel Arc" brand logo along with the "iCraft" logo in the top left corner.
The whole package has a very Intel look to it with the purple, pink, and blue hues. The front also displays the XeSS & XMX support.
The back of the box is very typical, highlighting the main features and specifications of the cards. The sides of the box greet us with the large Intel Arc branding. There's also the mention of 16 GB GDDR6 (Arc B580) memory available on the card.
Outside of the box, the graphics card and the accessory package are held firmly by foam packaging. The graphics card comes with a few accessories, such as a manual and an iCraft RGB plate.
The card is nicely wrapped within an anti-static cover, which is useful to prevent any unwanted static discharges on various surfaces that might harm the graphics card.
After the package is taken care of, I can finally start talking about the card itself. The graphics card comes in white, and honestly, it looks very sleek and premium.
Maxsun is using its latest iCraft design on its custom Arc B580 graphics card. The card measures 312 x 112 x 43.6 mm and features a 2.2-slot height.
The graphics card adopts a white "Daylight Glow Coating" color scheme with a plastic shroud on the front and an alloy metal backplate.
The back of the card features a solid metal backplate that looks stunning. The backplate offers a lot more functionality than just looks, which I will get back to in a bit.
In terms of design, the card features a triple-fan cooling solution.
The cooling solution is designed to offer better cooling than the reference design.
The RGB sources on the card include the four "X" shaped patterns on the front, and the LED illumination on the side, which reads "Evolution Knows No Limits" and an "i-Craft" logo.
Coming to the fans, there are three white-colored, PWM-controlled implementations on the card. The middle fan has a shiny silver ring structure that encircles the outer frame on the shroud. Each fan features 11 blades in 92 mm frames with axial technology.
GALAX's new fan system has the 0dB Fan Stop technology, which ensures that the fans don't spin at lower temperatures, avoiding unwanted noise output.
I am back to talking about the full-coverage, full metal-based backplate that the card uses. The whole plate is made of solid alloy metal with rounded edges that add to the durability of this card. The back continues the white theme and has a large "I-CRAFT" logo.
The graphics card also comes with a compact PCB design, which means that the shroud, heatsink, and backplate are all extended beyond the PCB. Both the second and third fan blow air through the heatsink and blow it out from the cutouts that are situated at the very end of the backplate. There are cutouts in the screw placements to reach the points on the graphics card easily.
With the outside of the card done, I will now start taking a glance at what's beneath the hood of the card. The first thing to catch my eye is the large fin stack that's part of the heatsink that the card utilizes.
The heatsink has been designed to be denser by increasing the footprint. This includes the use of denser aluminum fins and bigger heat pipes. There are a total of six heat pipes on the card, which connect to the baseplate.
I/O on the graphics card adheres to the reference scheme, which includes three DisplayPort 2.1b ports and a single HDMI 2.1a port.
The Maxsun Intel Arc B580 iCraft graphics card comes with dual 8-pin connectors to feed its 190W power rating.
The card features a 6-phase VRM for the GPU with six GDDR6 memory modules. The card sticks with the reference clock speeds, but given its custom nature, it can be overclocked.
Maxsun Intel Arc B580 iCraft RGB Lighting Gallery:
The iCraft series graphics cards are stylish and come with full ARGB illumination.
The following is what the graphics card looks like when lit up.
We used the following test system for comparison between the different graphics cards. The latest drivers that were available at the time of testing were used by AMD, Intel & NVIDIA on an updated version of Windows 11. All tested games were patched to the latest version for better performance optimization for NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD GPUs.
WCCFTECH GPU "E" Test Bench (2025):
| CPU | Intel Core i9-13900K @ Default |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | MSI MEG Z790 ACE |
| Video Cards | Maxsun Intel Arc B580 iCraft GALAX GeForce RTX 5060 EX Colorful GeForce RTX 5060 Battle NX ASRock Radeon RX 9060 XT Steel Legend OC MSI Radeon RX 6950 XT Gaming X Trio Intel Arc A770 16 GB Limited Edition MSI Radeon RX 6900 XT Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 3080 SUPRIM X MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Ti SUPRIM X MSI Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z ASRock RX 7800 XT Phantom Gaming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 FE MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Gaming X MSI GeForce RTX 5060 Gaming OC MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming X MSI Radeon RX 6650 XT Gaming X ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 Ti TUF Gaming Intel Arc B580 GALAX GeForce RTX 4070 OC 2X (GDDR6) ASRock Intel Arc B570 Challenger OC MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X |
| Memory | G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB (2 X 16GB) CL38 7200 Mbps |
| Storage | Teamgroup T-Force A440 Pro 2 TB Gen 4 |
| Power Supply | MSI MEG Ai1300P 1300W PSU |
| OS | Windows 11 64-bit (24H2) |
| Drivers | AMD Radeon Adrenalin Edition 25.10.09 NVIDIA GeForce 576.52 WHQL Intel 6733 WHQL |
- All games were tested at 3840x2160 (4K) resolution.
- Image Quality and graphics configurations are provided with each game description.
- The "reference" cards are the stock configs except where mentioned otherwise.
Speed Way
Developed with input from AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, and other leading technology companies, Speed Way is an ideal benchmark for comparing the DirectX 12 Ultimate performance of the latest graphics cards. 3DMark Speed Way’s engine is assembled to demonstrate what the latest DirectX API brings to ray-traced gaming, using DirectX Raytracing tier 1.1 for real-time global illumination and real-time ray-traced reflections, coupled with new performance optimizations like Mesh Shaders.
3DMark Speed Way Graphics
Firestrike
Firestrike is running the DX11 API and is still a good measure of GPU scaling performance. In this test, we ran the Extreme and Ultra versions of Firestrike, which run at 1440p and 4K, and we recorded the Graphics Score only since the Physics and combined scores are not pertinent to this review.
3DMark Firestrike Extreme Graphics
3DMark Firestrike Ultra Graphics
Time Spy
Time Spy is running the DX12 API, and we used it in the same manner as Firestrike Extreme, where we only recorded the Graphics Score, as the Physics score records the CPU performance and isn't important to the testing we are doing here.
3DMark Time Spy Graphics
3DMark Time Spy Extreme Graphics
Port Royal
Port Royal is another great tool in the 3DMark suite, but this one is 100% targeting Ray Tracing performance. It loads up ray-traced shadows, reflections, and global illumination to tax the performance of the graphics cards that either have hardware-based or software-based ray-tracing support.
3DMark Port Royal Score
3DMark Pure Ray Tracing Feature Test
Doom Eternal
DOOM Eternal brings hell to Earth with the Vulkan-powered IDTech 7. We test this game using the Ultra Nightmare Preset and follow our in-game benchmarking to stay consistent.
DOOM Eternal (Nightmare 4K)
Red Dead Redemption 2
Developed by Rockstar San Diego, Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the most visually stunning open-world games I've played to date. It is backed up by a rich story set around the protagonist, Arthur Morgan. The game is based on the RAGE engine, which features an insane amount of graphics fidelity but also requires a lot of power to run maxed out. For this test, we set the graphics settings to Ultra with AA turned off.
Red Dead Redemption 2 (4K Maxed)
Wolfenstein: Youngblood
Wolfenstein is back in The New Colossus and features the most fast-paced, gory, and brutal FPS action ever! The game once again puts us back in the Nazi-controlled world as BJ Blazkowicz. Set in an alternate future where the Nazis won World War II, the game shows that it can be fun and brutal to the player and to the enemy, too. Powering the new title is, once again, Id Tech 6, which is much acclaimed after the success that DOOM has become. In a way, ID has regained its glorious FPS roots and is slaying with every new title.
Wolfenstein
Alan Wake 2
Alan Wake 2 sets you up in a horror thriller that takes place in two dimensions and lets you play two different protagonists, Alan himself and Saga, who once again have to find a way to fix the darkness that erupted in Bright Falls.
Alan Wake 2 (Maxed Out / Rasterized)
Atomic Heart
Atomic Heart is set in an alternate universe where the Soviet Union achieved incredible technological breakthroughs thanks to a scientist named Dr. Sechenov, who invented a liquid programmable module called Polymer that links robots in a so-called Kollektiv network.
Atomic Heart (4K Maxed)
Battlefield V
Battlefield V brings back the action of the World War 2 shooter genre. Using the latest Frostbite tech, the game does a good job of looking gorgeous in all ways possible. From the open-world environments to the intense and gun-blazing action, this multiplayer and single-player FPS title is one of the best-looking Battlefield titles to date.
Battlefield V (Maxed)
Baldur's Gate III
2023's GOTY is well-deserved for its title. The creation from Larian Studios is a turn-based RPG that has gorgeous interiors and exteriors shown through a bird's eye top-to-bottom view. You can sink countless hours into the game, and if you're a fan of the D&D playstyle, then this epic is just for you.
Baldurs Gate III (Maxed Out)
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 is an action role-playing video game developed by CD Projekt Red and published by CD Projekt. The story takes place in Night City, an open world set in the Cyberpunk universe. Players assume the first-person perspective of a customizable mercenary known as V, who can acquire skills in hacking and machinery with options for melee and ranged combat. The game uses CD Projekt Red's in-house Red Engine, which is one of the most visually breathtaking and also one of the most graphics-intensive engines designed to date.
Cyberpunk 2077 (Maxed Out)
Dead Space (Remake)
Remaking Dead Space was a bold choice, but I would say that the team at EA Motive nailed every bit and piece of this horror classic. The remake makes the USG Ishimura twice as scarily beautiful. The gore, the endless corridors of terror, the void of space, all of it looks incredible while the game remains true to its core, to the original Dead Space formula. Modern cards can run the game well, but it can also be demanding if you crank the settings to the max with ray tracing enabled.
Dead Space Remake (Ultra / No RT)
Death Stranding
Sam Porter Bridges has delivered one of PS4's most anticipated games to the PC community and opened a whole new world of possibilities. This was the first game to feature the Decima Engine on PC and unarguably did it the best. Death Stranding may not feature ray-tracing effects, but it does showcase that DLSS can be used effectively even when RT isn't around. We tested this one just like we did in our launch coverage with DLSS enabled.
Death Stranding DLSS/FSR/XeSS (Quality)
Forza Horizon 5
Forza Horizon 5 carries on the open-world racing tradition of the Horizon series. The latest DX12-powered entry is beautifully crafted, amazingly well executed, and a great showcase of DX12 games. We use the benchmark run while having all the settings set to non-dynamic with an uncapped framerate to gather these results.
Forza Horizon 5 (Maxed Out)
Halo Infinite (DX12 Highest)
Next up, we have the latest entry in the Halo franchise, Halo: Infinite, which uses the brand new Slipspace engine (although there are rumors it will be ditched in the future for Unreal Engine) based on the DX12 API. The game rocks some incredible environments for Master Chief to visit on the Halo ring.
Halo Infinite (Maxed Out)
Hitman III (DX12 Highest Settings)
Hitman III is the highly acclaimed sequel to the 2016 Hitman & 2018 Hitman II, which was a redesign and reimaging of the game from the ground up. With a focus on stealth gameplay through various missions, the game once again lets you play as Agent 47. The game runs on the IO Interactive Glacier 2 engine, which has been updated to deliver amazing visuals and environments on each level while making use of the DirectX 12 API.
Hitman III (Maxed Out)
Metro Exodus
Metro Exodus continues Artyom's journey through Russia's nuclear wasteland and its surroundings. This time, you are set over the Metro, going through various regions and different environments. The game is one of the premier titles to feature NVIDIA’s RTX technology and does well in showcasing the ray-tracing effects in all corners.
Metro Exodus (Extreme Preset)
Resident Evil Village
Resident Evil Village is the latest in the horror franchise that was wonderfully rekindled with RE7 and onto the RE2 Remake. But now the RE Engine is back and better than ever with Ray Traced Reflections and Lighting that makes the world just come to life, unironically. The game was tested in the center of the village itself with all graphical settings maxed out and with raytracing enabled.
Resident Evil Village (Maxed)
Resident Evil IV Remake
The remake of the beloved and highly acclaimed Resident Evil IV is here, boasting the latest RE engine, which adds stunning visuals and even better ray tracing effects. The game looks just as incredible as it plays.
Resident Evil 4 Remake (Maxed)
Starfield
Bethesda's latest RPG epic is set in space and takes place across a vast universe, filled with lots of planets to explore. Based on the latest iteration of the Creation Engine, Starfield offers a great amount of visual fidelity, whether you are exploring an abandoned base or just roaming a planet on which you have just set foot.
Starfield (DirectX 12 / Max)
No graphics card review is complete without evaluating its temperatures and thermal load.
Temperatures
Ever since the launch of the Intel Arc B-Series, the B580 and B570 graphics cards have been positioned strongly in the mainstream segment. The Intel Arc B580 starts at $249 US, which makes it a very strong product for gamers.
Looking at the performance figures, the Intel Arc B580 graphics card competes well against the products it is designed to tackle, such as the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060, and even outperforms the Arc A770 16 GB & RTX 5060 8 GB graphics cards in some titles. These are due to the architectural optimizations and fixes enabled in the Battlemage Xe2 architecture. The graphics card is designed to be a 1080p gaming solution, but also does well at 1440p thanks to its 12 GB VRAM. We expect the Arc B580 to outperform the recently launched RTX 5050.
In terms of design, the Arc B580 iCraft is a solid design that gives off a very premium touch in this price category. Maxsun and Intel have been closely collaborating on new designs under the Arc series, one such design is the dual Arc Pro B60, which is currently the only "official" card to pack two BMG-G21 GPU dies. Maxsun's expertise in creating unique designs for gamers is also clearly shown with its iCraft series. The card runs cool, and the RGB display is very nice.
The biggest update that Battlemage brings with it is a stronger software suite and driver support. We encountered no major issues with the Arc B580 throughout our testing. The GPU software ran great, and Intel should be applauded for its commitment to the software side of the Arc family. In addition to that, the Battlemage family brings with it XeSS2 support with technologies such as frame generation and low-latency modes, which will soon be enabled in a range of AAA games. It's not only discrete GPUs but the integrated Xe2 family that will take advantage of these features & that's a big plus for PC gamers and handheld/mobility users.
Pricing-wise, the Intel Arc B580 at $249 US is competitive enough to become the next budget king. No other card at this price point offers the same level of performance coupled with 12 GB of VRAM. It has more VRAM than the RTX 5060, and often beats it. Plus, driver support from Intel is once again great & continues to get better.
The things we loved about the Intel Arc B580 graphics card:
- Fantastic Value
- Great Custom Design
- 12 GB VRAM
- Great Performance at 1080p, and even does well at 1440p
- XeSS2 support with frame-gen & low-latency mode
- HDMI 2.1 & DP 2.1 Support
- Driver & software support have significantly improved
- 3 GHz+ OC & fan curve support is great
Things that we would have liked to see:
- Idle & average power could be lower
- More games with XeSS2 support
The main issue for the Arc B580 at the moment is availability and pricing. While Maxsun has the Intel Arc B580 iCraft priced at $275, we were unable to find it anywhere close to that. Newegg and Amazon have the card "Out of Stock", and the latest price is listed at $371, which is about $100 US more expensive, and at that price point, the B580 iCraft or any B580 will be hard to justify. Keeping up with demand has been a problem for Intel for its Arc lineup, and with the Pro series, it looks like more dies will be allocated to those products than the gaming lineup, given the AI demand. At $275 US, I can recommend the Arc B580 iCraft from Maxsun, but anything above that, especially the $350 US+ price, makes solutions from competitors such as the RTX 5060 Ti or the RX 9060 XT a better option.
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About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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