The new king of $250 GPUs (for now)

When Intel launched the first Arc video cards two years agoI was very skeptical. Can a company that abandoned its last major GPU project in 2009 succeed in a market dominated by NVIDIA and AMD? Well, when I reviewed it in 2022, the Arc A750 and A770 turned out better than I thought, even though they were also held back by Intel’s poor drivers. But it seems that Intel has learned from its mistakes.

$250 new Picture of B580 it performs better than AMD’s low-end Radeon 7600, and can mess up a bit with NVIDIA when it comes to ray tracing. The only question is whether it is worth investing in a given Intel video card corporate identity. But for an inexpensive video card, with a price that goes back to the early 2000s, the risk may be worth it.

Intel

Intel’s Arc B580 is rare: a $250 GPU that delivers solid 1080p and 1440p gaming, albeit with a bit of tracking.

Goodness

• Faster than Radeon 7600 and RTX 4060
• XeSS upscaling works fine
• Efficient and quiet
• Only $250

evil

• XeSS is not as widely supported as DLSS 3
• AMD’s new cards may continue

$250 at Newegg

The B580 marks the debut of Intel’s second-generation Arc Xe2 GPUs, and will be joined by the $219 B570 next month. Based on their writing alone, it’s easy to see why they’re pushing budget games. The B580 has 20 Xe cores, 20 ray tracing units and faster clock speeds than previous Arc cards. More importantly, however, it’s rocking 12GB of VRAM with a 192-bit memory interface, giving it more room to output 1440p games.

The $299 NVIDIA RTX 4060, by comparison, has 8GB of VRAM and a limited 128-bit display. Even though the RTX 4060 Ti sports less VRAM, it’s undercutting both GPUs especially for 1080p gaming (especially if you want ray tracing). AMD Radeon RX 7600which goes for around $269, it is also burdened with 8GB of RAM and lower performance than NVIDIA and Intel cards.

Although Intel has a clear advantage in hardware, times are very difficult. The Arc B580 was launched as we prepare for CES 2025, where NVIDIA and AMD are expected to showcase new desktop GPUs. With NVIDIA’s prices on the rise, I wouldn’t bet on seeing the RTX 5060 around $250, but AMD is another story. It has been trying to influence the low-end and mid-range GPU market for years, and he says it’s still like that and its RDNA 4 cards. There’s a good chance we’ll eventually see another affordable GPU model from AMD.

If you’re looking to build a budget gaming console in the next few months, however, the Arc B580 will have you covered. In my test, it slightly outperformed the RTX 4060 Ti in 3DMark’s Timespy Extreme Benchmark, and it was also faster than the Radeon 7600. The B580 shined a lot with ray tracing. I hit 58fps average in Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark running at 1080p with Ultra graphics settings and medium ray tracing. The Radeon 7600, on the other hand, sometimes struggled to stay above 40 fps with similar settings.

I was pleasantly surprised by how well the Arc B580 handled 1440p gaming. In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I hit 70 fps regularly with the highest resolution, mid-range ray tracing and Intel’s XeSS upscaling. It’s a better performance than you’ll see on a $700 PlayStation 5 Pro (though admittedly, Sony’s PSSR AI upgrade would look better in person). I also hit 85 fps on average while playing Hello Infinite in 1440p with larger graphics, which was slightly better than the 4060 Ti. While we’re used to graphics cards primarily for 1080p gaming, the Arc B580’s extra memory makes it suitable for 1440p.

However, there are benefits that competition offers. NVIDIA’s RTX GPUs can also work with its own special software, such as NVIDIA Broadcaster, which can clean up your audio and video streams and capture. In addition, NVIDIA’s DLSS 3 upscaling is available for over 500 games, while Intel’s XeSS just breaking 200. And then there’s the driver problem: NVIDIA has years of solid GPU software development, while Intel is still recovering from its recent missteps. At least XeSS 2 AI upscaling seems to be more effective than AMD’s FSR 3 (FidelityFX Super Resolution), since Intel’s technology looks better and can often increase performance by 30 percent or more.

The Arc B580 also survived several hours of benchmarking and gaming without any hardware or driver issues. When I first tested the Arc A750 and A770, they usually crashed within an hour of testing. Intel software has advanced. The reference version of the B580 I tested was also very cool, not exceeding 64 degrees Celsius (which also prevented its two large fans from making noise). Although there will be third-party cards, I was also impressed with Intel’s design: the B580 feels substantial and solid, not cheap and plastic like many other GPUs.

So far, it seems that Intel has already started problem keeping the Arc B580 in the groupa rare problem for a beleaguered chip giant. It’s easy to see why gamers are smitten: It offers solid 1080p and 1440p performance on most new titles, albeit with a bit of tracking. Finally, there’s a $250 GPU available that doesn’t make you feel like you’re being left behind the pack. It’s a clear win for Intel – until we see something new from AMD.