As a PC hardware journalist, I’ve had the chance to test some of the best graphics cards. Those I didn’t test, I’ve still read countless reviews about, as GPUs are my main area of interest. As a result, I’m often asked which GPU to buy for this or that use case, and I always treat those recommendations very seriously. After all, graphics cards are anything but cheap right now.
I won’t lie to you — this has been a rough year for the GPU market at large, and there aren’t many cards that I truly swear by. However, one quite unexpected gem has emerged as the GPU I’ve recommended the most this year, and it’s probably not the one you think.
The little GPU that could
Without further ado, the GPU that I keep recommending is Intel’s Arc B580 — but before I tell you why, let me give you a bit of background first.
Firmly playing from the position of an underdog, Intel followed up its first-gen Arc Alchemist lineup with Battlemage in December 2024, revealing the Arc B580 and the Arc B570 at the same time. And, while the enthusiasts were certainly watching, many gamers were not. Nvidia dominates the GPU market, with AMD trailing behind; meanwhile, Intel doesn’t have a large volume of graphics cards, and it also had a rocky launch in the previous generation.
Intel had its work cut out for it with the launch of Arc Alchemist, and unfortunately, the lineup was not completely free from issues. Delayed multiple times and riddled with driver problems at launch, Arc Alchemist didn’t get to shine bright until later on in the generation. Intel’s driver team had done a tremendous job improving Alchemist and making it a reasonable option when compared to its AMD and Nvidia counterparts.
It’s the uphill climb of Arc Alchemist that made me hesitant about Battlemage, but I still watched with interest — and I was right. Intel absolutely proved that it could release a fantastic product with the Arc B580, and at a mere $250, too. Nvidia’s and AMD’s counterparts were priced at $300 and up.
In our benchmarks, the Arc B580 outclassed Nvidia’s RTX 4060 at 1080p, proving to be around 9% faster. This is a fantastic result, but the B580 arrived on the market shortly before Nvidia’s RTX 50-series started rolling out at CES 2025. Intel also managed to beat its own last-gen flagship, the Arc A770, at a lower price.
Although Intel advertises the B580 as a 1440p graphics card, most gamers who are buying a $250 GPU are in the 1080p bracket. Still, the B580 puts up an impressive fight at 1440p, beating last-gen’s Arc A750 by 50% and Nvidia’s RTX 4060 by a massive 18%. Of course, both AMD and Nvidia now have newer generations to compete against Intel, but Intel’s Arc B580 still has a place in current lineups.
There’s a reason why Intel is consistently solid, and why I’ve recommended it to many people this year. Outside of pure performance, the reason lies in VRAM.
The VRAM debate never seems to end
Intel has a major advantage over Nvidia and AMD cards at the same price point — it offers 12GB of VRAM over a 192-bit memory bus. Meanwhile, no matter if you stick to the previous generation or the current one, you’ll find the mainstream bracket littered with cards with 8GB of VRAM across a 128-bit interface. And slowly, gamers are starting to push back.
Unlike many journalists, I won’t tell you that GPUs with 8GB VRAM are no good at all — I believe that they still have their place in the graphics card market, for now. I personally know many gamers who aren’t too tuned into the nitty-gritty of it all and are happy to just have a graphics card that works well enough. Those people won’t notice the difference between, say, 40 frames per second (fps) and 50 fps as much as enthusiasts will. But for people like me, who like to dig deep into benchmarks and want to play at high settings, 8GB is starting to feel a little limiting.
Still, if you wanted more than 8GB VRAM, you’d have to scale up to the RTX 5070 or the RTX 5060 Ti for Nvidia, or the RX 9060 XT 16GB for AMD in this current generation. All of those are significantly pricier than Intel.
Intel’s Arc B580 gives you a shocking amount of future-proofing with its robust memory interface. This shows in our 1440p benchmarks, and it’ll likely stay the same as time goes on and more and more games call for more VRAM. I suspect that Intel’s $250 GPU will stand the test of time.
There’s only one problem.
One major caveat
When asked about a cheap, but solid GPU, I consistently convince my friends and colleagues to try out the Arc B580. I’ve been endlessly impressed with it since launch, and despite the arrival of newer cards from AMD and Nvidia, I still think that the B580 remains a great deal.
The caveat? You need to buy it at MSRP, and that can be a problem.
When bought at the $250 launch price, Intel’s Arc B580 is a steal. But some models sell for well over $350, and at that price bracket, adding an extra $100 completely shifts the performance-per-value aspect of this card. Spending $350 gets you the RTX 5060, but more importantly, adding another $30 currently gets you the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT, which sports 16GB VRAM and is faster than the Intel Arc B580.
At that price point, Intel no longer makes as much sense.
I’ve seen Intel’s Arc B580 go for over $400, and at those times, my best piece of advice was to wait for the price to drop. Fortunately, although some models are still drastically overpriced, the Onix Lumi Arc B580 is $270 right now. It’s not quite the MSRP, but it’s close enough that I can confidently say that it’s worth it.
If you want a GPU that does the job at 1080p and can work well at 1440p once you tweak the settings a little bit, and you don’t want to spend a fortune, don’t shy away from Intel. While niche when compared to Nvidia, Intel’s graphics division continues doing a good job, and the Arc B580 deserves to be considered when shopping for a mainstream GPU.
