So, it’s been more than half a year since the official launch of the Intel Arc Battlemage B580, and after a long, arduous, but patient wait, the card is finally in our lab, out of the box, and on my testbench.
I know, I know. I’m late to the party but again, what could I do? Intel couldn’t get the card to me in time all those months ago, and not for lack of trying, even. Lest we forget that the company is undergoing some major seismic shifts internally, I’m just happy that they managed to get the card to me. So, let’s not waste anymore time here and get right into it.
Specifications
Design
As it always is with reference shrouds, Intel’s choice of aesthetic for the B580 cooler shroud is black, simple, and unassuming. There are some difference from when we last reviewed the A750: the brand pays respect to the innovative dual axis flowthrough aesthetics first brought about with NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 30 Series FE cards (somewhat), with a cutout at the back of the card, for one of the fans to blow directly through.
On that note, the B580 uses a standard dual front fan configuration but compared to Alchemist, the card and its Battlemage architecture only requires a single 8-pin PCIe power port to run.
It also maintains the same single slot thickness, which is good for the kind of clientele Intel is aiming for. The chipmaker has made it clear that this card isn’t for the enthusiast gamer, but rather for the gamer seeking an affordable alternative to the wildly overpriced GPUs from team Red and team Green right now.
Ports-wise, the card comes with one HDMI 2.1a port, and three DisplayPort 2.1 ports, the latter ports making them capable of 8K output but let’s be serious, you’re obviously not going to be running anything at that resolution with this card.
Testbench
My testbench is the same as it has always been: an AMD system with the Ryzen 9 9950X. If you’re wondering why I’m not testing this with one of Intel’s more current CPUs and motherboards, the very simple answer is: I don’t have an Intel-based motherboard to pair with my current CPUs.
That said, I think this keeps things fair, as it gives us an idea of how the B580 fares when running on an AMD system. For comparison, the card will be benched against the RTX 4060 Ti, RTX 5060 Ti, and the Radeon RX 9060 XT.
Oh, and I’ll be running the card with whatever upscaling accoutrement the titles offer, rather than on pure rasterisation.
Benchmarks, Temperature, And Power Consumption
As Intel promised, the B580’s performance is impressive. On a synthetic level, the card is on par, if not better, than the RTX 4060. That’s on both 3Dmark and Unigine Superposition.
In real-world performance, the B580 barely breaks a sweat while running our control titles at QHD resolution. Its performance in Helldivers 2 is especially impressive, given that it is the only title on the list that doesn’t have any of the upscaling voodoo from either side, game breaking bugs notwithstanding. At Full HD, the average frames jump as expected, albeit at an average of 10 to 15 fps.
The fact that the B580 runs above the 60 fps mark on Doom The Dark Ages is also a feat; it’s one of a handful of games that runs with ray-tracing baked into the game by default, and with XeSS and Frame Generation, certainly felt more akin to a console experience.
As for the temperature and power consumption, I found the B580 pulling far less than its peak 190W TGP. At most, the card only pulled 150W on a full load, and around 22W when idle.
Overall temperature of the card paints a similar story too, hitting 63°C at peak, while its idling temperature tend to sit higher at 41°C, far higher than its rivals. On a side note, the fan acoustics aren’t harsh, with coil whine being non-existent.
Conclusion
At an average of RM1,299 a pop, the Intel Arc B580 is a mid-range card that serves as a credible alternative, if not threat, for gamers looking for an affordable alternative to the flavours currently on offer from the green and red team. For that matter, it also shows that Intel’s graphics division hasn’t just been sitting around and twiddling their thumbs, hoping for a miracle to happen.
Which is what makes what I’m going to say a very hard pill for Intel to swallow. Considering that its Battlemage GPU has been out for almost a year at this point, and the fact that the card was only sent to me within the last month and a half by the time of publication, it’s clear that the company may have missed the boat on grabbing a slice of the affordable GPU pie, however thin it may be.
It also doesn’t help that, at its price point, you could get yourself an RTX 5060 8GB that, understandably, would be better, by virtue of the software support from its parent company. Again, the B580 is still a very serviceable card and it is an alternative to those that really want to experimental outside of NVIDIA and AMD. Otherwise, it feels a little outclassed.
Photography by John Law.
