Intel's second-generation Xe2 Arc GPUs are real, and once again, they could be attractive options for gamers looking for capable video cards under $250. Confirming last week's leaks, Intel today unveiled the $249 Arc B580 and the slightly less capable $219 B570, both of which target 1,440p gaming. They feature the company's new XeSS2 ai capabilities (which will also come to older Arc cards), including super resolution upscaling (like the original The goal, according to Intel, is to offer more performance per dollar compared to NVIDIA's $299 RTX 4060 and AMD's Radeon 7600.
It's noble speech, but also a repeat of what Intel tried with its previous Arc GPUs. We quite liked those cards and the company was diligent in rolling out driver updates, but that hasn't stopped its overall share of the GPU market. falling to zero percent. I'd bet a lot of gamers didn't want to take a chance on Intel hardware and software when NVIDIA and AMD's offerings were battle-tested and a bit more expensive.
However, the increased power of the Xe2 cards could change the situation for Intel. The company claims that the B580 is on average 24 percent faster than its previous limited edition A750 GPU at 1440p with Ultra graphics settings, and also has a 10 percent lead over NVIDIA's RTX 4060. (Intel benchmarks show the B580 runs 43 percent faster than the RTX 4060 in Cyberpunk 2077but at the same time it is almost 20 percent slower while playing RoboCop: Rogue City.)
Specs-wise, Intel's new GPUs should live up to the demands of 1,440p-focused gamers. The B580 features 20 2500 MHz. I'd bet most people would be better off spending the extra $30 for a little more security in the future, but 1080p gamers may not see the need for much additional power.
In a media briefing, Intel insider Tom Petersen explained that the company learned a lot from its previous GPUs (which also marked the first time Intel had seriously worked on discrete graphics since 2010). “With XE2, we have a new hardware platform and that allows us to deliver higher utilization, better distribution of work and less software overhead,” he said. “So at the end of the day, it's about increasing the efficiency of the software so we can deliver the benefits of the hardware we're building.”
At the very least, Intel's new XeSS ai features are competitive with NVIDIA's DLSS3. The B580 GPU can double the performance of Diablo IV When using XeSS, according to Intel, the new frame-raising feature should be able to increase the fps count even further. Like NVIDIA's technology, it's not just about upscaling graphics from a lower resolution, it also interpolates entirely new frames. The company's XeSS2 Low Latency, or XeLL, also improves responsiveness by 45 percent. Intel claims that the B580 outperforms the RTX 4060 in ai LLM performance, achieving around 20 more tokens per second in Llama 2 and Llama 3.1 workloads.
While it would be interesting to see if Intel can ever scale its Arc GPUs beyond the midrange (the previous Arc 770 was a solid RTX 3070 Ti competitor), I'm honestly more intrigued by how the company is innovating in the low range. end. Thanks to the increasing complexity of high-end GPUs, the idea of being cheap and Capable video cards have all but disappeared in the last decade. Intel could gain a loyal fan base of budget gamers if actually continuing its GPU efforts.
If you're intrigued by these new GPUs, you won't have to wait long to get your hands on them. The Arc B580 cards will be available on December 13 for $249, while the Arc B570 models will arrive next month, on January 16, for $219. Intel will make its own limited edition version of the Arc B580 (above), but will leave the B570 cards in the hands of its partners, including Acer, ASRock, and Sparkle.
