A little over a month ago, the Intel Arc B580 debuted, having previously amazed reviewers – everyone vying with each other to praise the video card for its excellent price-performance ratio. Today, reviews of its younger sister based on the Battlemage architecture – Arc B570 – appeared. And here the reviewers were no longer so favorable – there is something to complain about in the new product.
Image Source: TechSpot
The Intel Arc B570 video card has a graphics processor with 18 Xe2 cores (2304 shader engines), 144 texture units, 72 rasterization units, 144 tensor cores and 18 second-generation ray tracing cores. This is two Xe2 cores less than the Arc B580. The GPU clock speed of the reference version is 2500 MHz. Compared to the Arc B580, the video memory volume of the new product has been reduced from 12 to 10 GB, the bus width has been reduced from 192 to 160 bits, and the bandwidth has been reduced from 456 to 380 GB/s. At the same time, power consumption was reduced – from 190 to 150 W.
The recommended price for the Arc B570 is $219 versus $249 for the older Arc B580. The new product is positioned as a video card for affordable gaming PCs and is suitable for games with Full HD resolution, and can also handle running games at 1440p.
The TechSpot portal also tested the video card in two different systems: with the flagship Ryzen 7 9800X3D, as well as with the budget Ryzen 5 5600. Still, the new product is a fairly budget video card, and in most cases it will be adjacent to the corresponding processor. And it turned out that the new product does not work as well with old processors as with new ones. “So if you have a Ryzen 5 5600 or lower processor, choosing a competing GPU like the Radeon RX 7600 will guarantee better overall performance,” TechSpot notes.
As for energy consumption, the Arc B570 is indeed more economical than the Arc B580. According to TechPowerUp, in games the new product consumes about 155 W – 30 W less than the Arc B580.
Reviewers are unanimous that the $250 Arc B580 looks like a much more interesting choice than the $220 Arc B570. Many observers note that if the new product cost $200, it would become much more tempting. “Decent performance, not the best price” and “a stillborn video card without a price reduction,” wrote colleagues from TechSpot. On the other hand, if price is a critical factor when buying a video card, then the Arc B570 may be a good option – at this price there are simply no direct competitors, and they are unlikely to appear.
Finally, we will add that reviewers are still complaining about some problems with Intel drivers. And many also mentioned the main problem of the Arc B580, which may well overtake the Arc B570 – these video cards are very difficult to find on sale. So, given the lack of Arc B580 on the shelves, the new product has a chance.