Skip to main content

Intel’s forgotten Arc GPU might still have some life

Intel Arc A770 graphics card.
Intel

Intel’s most stealthy GPU appeared in yet another round of leaked benchmarks. The Intel Arc A580 was tested in OpenCL on Geekbench, and its score pits it against AMD’s RX 7600. But does that really mean that it’ll be on par with one of AMD’s best graphics cards in this generation?

Recommended Videos

Although most of us have heard of the Arc A770 and the Arc A750, and even the entry-level Arc A380, the Arc A580 remains a bit of a myth. Announced well over a year ago, the GPU has been spotted in benchmarks every so often, but Intel hasn’t released it to the market just yet. It’s hard to say what the reason is behind this delay, as the specs of the card have been known for a long time.

The Arc A580 comes with 24 Xe cores, 8GB of GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit bus, and the same bandwidth as the Arc A750 and the 8GB version of the Arc A770 — 512GB/s. The maximum clock speed is said to be 1.7GHz, but the card surpassed it by far in the benchmark, maxing out at 2.4GHz.

Paired with an Intel Core i7-12700 CPU and 32GB of DDR5-4800 RAM, the GPU managed to score 82,992 points in the OpenCL benchmark, which is actually a tiny bit more than the RX 7600 (82,981 points). However, that doesn’t necessarily make the Arc A580 the new budget gaming hero — assuming that it even hits the market.

What we’re seeing here is a single benchmark score, and in an OpenCL test, too. This means that it’s not indicative of the card’s gaming potential at all, as it tests the general compute performance first and foremost. It’s important not to get too excited here.

[GB5 GPU] Unknown GPU
CPU: Intel Core i7-12700 (12C 20T)
CPUID: 90672 (GenuineIntel)
GPU: Intel Arc A580
API: Open CL
Score: 82992
VRAM: 6.32 GBhttps://t.co/jSP7IYuXAe

— Benchleaks (@BenchLeaks) August 3, 2023

With that disclaimer out of the way, it’s still a good score for the A580. While AMD’s recent RX 7600 is a little slower than its Nvidia counterpart (RTX 4060), it’s still a solid GPU due to its budget pricing.

Intel Arc Alchemist is now one generation behind the competition, but it could still prove to be successful if priced correctly. Winning on performance per dollar has always been Intel’s plan, so with that in mind, we might be looking at a $150 to $200 GPU that could make a decent alternative for budget-friendly PC builds.

Seeing as Intel has been hard at work releasing drivers and performance adjustments for its flagship GPUs, the Arc A580 might turn out better than expected. Still, it certainly wouldn’t hurt for Intel to remind the world that it even exists, what with the long delay between the announcement and the still unknown release date.

Monica J. White
Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…
Prices for Intel’s Arc B580 are already shooting through the roof
The Intel logo on the Arc B580 graphics card.

Intel just launched its new $249 Arc B580 graphics card, and as you can read in our Intel Arc B580 review, it's one of the best graphics cards you can buy. It seems PC gamers have gotten the memo, as most models of the card are sold out online. If you want to get one now, you'll have to spend close to double the list price.

Looking at online retailers, it looks like Newegg has the most models listed for sale, though almost all of them are sold out. The only models available come from Gunnir, and they're both very expensive. The , while the . Both are sold by third-party sellers -- they aren't sold and shipped by Newegg -- so I wouldn't recommend spending up for one of these cards.

Read more
Intel’s new $249 GPU brings 1440p gaming to the masses
An exploded view of Intel's Arc A580 GPU.

Intel is trying to redefine what a "budget GPU" really means in 2024, and it's doing so with the new Arc B580 GPU. In what Intel itself described as its "worst kept secret," the B580 is the debut graphics card in Intel's new Battlemage range of discrete GPUs, and it's arriving at just $249. That's a price point that's been relegated to 1080p for decades, but Intel says the B580 will change that dynamic.

It's a 1440p GPU, at least by Intel's definition. That's despite the fact that Intel is comparing the card to GPUs like the RTX 4060 and RX 7600, both of which are more expensive than the B580 and squarely target 1080p. Intel says it can deliver higher performance than these two GPUs while undercutting the price, all in an attempt to capitalize on 1440p gamers. "1440p is becoming 1080p," as Intel's Tom Petersen put it in a pre-briefing with the press.

Read more
Intel Battlemage is almost here, but the wait isn’t over
Intel Arc A770 GPU installed in a test bench.

After weeks of rumors, it's finally a fact: Intel Arc Battlemage is on the imminent horizon, and the company is set to announce its next-gen GPUs on December 3. However, according to leaks, we're not getting the full scope of Intel Battlemage just yet. In fact, it may be a long time before we see Battlemage rank among the best graphics cards.

It's been a quiet year for Intel's discrete graphics department, but the last few weeks have been filled with leaks, and now, Intel itself confirms that we're getting some sort of an announcement tomorrow. It's unclear what exactly is being announced, other than the fact that it's Battlemage.

Read more