Intel’s Arc Battlemage series or B-Series, is finally live. Per earlier rumours, the chipmaker is launching two SKUs under it, the B580 and B570.
To quickly run through the product specs, the Battlemage B580 sports 12GB GDDR6 with a graphics clock of 2,670MHz, 20 Xe2 Cores, 20 ray-tracing units, 1650 XMX AI Engines, a memory bandwidth of 456GB/s, and a TGP of 190W.
As for the B570, the GPU features 10GB GDDR6 with a graphics clock of 2,500MHz, 18 Xe2 Cores, 18 ray-tracing units, 144 XMX AI Engines, a memory bandwidth of 380MB/s, running at on a TGP fo 150W. Intel says that both Battlemage cards are designed to run games at 1440p resolution, simply because the market trends shows gamers gravitating towards that resolution.
Intel’s Limited Edition Battlemage cards have also been redesigned. Well, sort of. Internally, the company has obviously shifted the placement of components around the GPU core, but on the outside, it’s clear to see that it has taken a page out of NVIDIA’s playbook with the cutout at the back of the cooler shroud. And of course, there are the AIB partner cards of the two GPUs.
More than just a physical improvement in the GPU core, Intel is also introducing its new XeSS2, its second generation upscaling technology. Yes, the naming convention is a tad bit confusing but bear with us. So, XeSS2 now comprises three elements: the Super Resolution part or XeSS-SR; the Frame Generation element, also known as XeSS-FG; and XeSS Low Latency.
These upscaling elements aren’t anything new; both its rivals, NVIDIA and AMD, have their own version of the upscaling technology through DLSS3 and FSR3, respectively. Battlemage is just Intel finally jumping on the bandwagon with the extras like Frame Generation and Low Latency. The end result, as per the presentation, is more than double, sometimes triple the framerates in games that support its technology, such as Fortnite, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, and the latest F1 title. All this, by the by, is also driven by Intel’s XMX AI Engines that, as you can tell by this point, can be used for more than gaming.
To that end, Intel is also introducing AI Playground, an open-source program that allows users to generate images from text, using 12 billion parameters. It’s all pretty self-explanatory; like Stable Diffusion, you type in a description of an image you have in mind, and the program simply generates an images base on your description.
Intel Arc Battlemage will be available starting with the B580 on 13 December, at a starting SRP of US$249 (~RM1,112). Then, from 16 January 2025 onwards, the B570 will be available at a starting SRP of US$219 (~RM978).
