Intel Battlemage – Arc B580 and Arc B570 From Specs to Performance

Intel recently announced its highly anticipated Battlemage graphics cards, Arc B580 and Arc B570. Intel Battlemage cards are based on the next-gen Xe2 architecture, which targets budget gaming audiences. They can be one of the best options for people who are looking for a 1440p graphics card. Intel Battlemage promises advancements in efficiency and performance compared to previous products.

Vivian Lien, Intel vice president and general manager of Client Graphics had the following to say about this exciting new launch:

“The new Intel Arc B-Series GPUs are the perfect upgrades for gamers. They deliver leading performance-per-dollar and great 1440p gaming experiences with XeSS 2, second-generation ray tracing engines, and XMX AI engines. We’re delighted to be joined by more partners than ever so that gamers have more choice in finding their perfect design.” 

In this article, we’ll take you through everything you need to know about the Intel Battlemage graphics cards, the release date, pricing, features, specs, and more.

Arc B580 and Arc B570 Release Date and Pricing

Intel’s Arc B58 is already within reach. It’s being released on December 13^th, 2024. This is great news for Intel fans across the globe, as it’s the more powerful card of the two, and it will be released first. Then, just over a month later, on January 16, 2025, the Arc B570 will be available to purchase.

This means Intel is entering the market before AMD and NVIDIA’s next-generation graphic cards launch. Gamers and general tech-enthusiasts certainly have a lot to look forward to in the next couple of months as these tech giants roll out their new products. The Arc B580 and Arc B570 are mid-range budget graphic cards, balancing functionality and affordability. The Arc B580 is priced at $249, and the Arc B580 will be available for $219. Intel describes the new models as “Best-in-class performance per dollar.”

The Intel Arc B580 is available in multiple variants from Intel’s partners, including Acer (Nitor), AsRock (Challenger, Steel Legend), Gunnir (Index, Photon), Sparkle (Guardian, Titan), Onix (Lumi, Odyssey), and Maxsun (I-Craft, Milestone).

Intel Battlemage Arc B580 and Arc B570 Full Specs

The two new Intel graphic cards have some interesting specs compared to the previous Intel models. The company is clearly focused on providing cost-efficient graphic cards that can offer a great performance with these new models. The kind of performance that is usually not expected from a $250 GPU. Intel claims that, on average, the Arc B580 performs 24% faster than the Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition, and 10% faster than NVIDIA RTX 4060.

Here are the full specifications of both new Arc models:

Arc B580 GPU Specifications

• Xe-cores: 20
• Render Slices: 5
• Ray Tracing Units: 20
• Intel X Matrix Extensions (Intel XMX) Engines: 160
• X Vector Engines: 160
• Graphics Clock: 2670 MHz
• GPU Peak TOPS (Int8): 233
• Total Board Power (TBP): 190 W
• PCI Express Configurations: PCI Express 4.0 x8
• Memory: 12 GB GDDR6 192-bit
• Graphics Memory Bandwidth: 456 GB/s
• Graphics Memory Speed: 19 Gbps
• Graphics Output: HDMI 2.1, DP2.1 up to UHBR 13.5, DP2.1 up to UHBR 10
• Max Resolution (HDMI): 7680 x 4320@120Hz
• Max Resolution (DP): 7680 x 4320@60Hz

Arc B570 GPU Specifications

• Xe-cores: 18
• Render Slices: 5
• Ray Tracing Units: 18
• Intel X Matrix Extensions (Intel XMX) Engines: 144
• X Vector Engines: 144
• Graphics Clock: 2500 MHz
• GPU Peak TOPS (Int8): 203
• Total Board Power (TBP): 150 W
• PCI Express Configurations: PCI Express 4.0 x8
• Memory: 10 GB GDDR6 160-bit
• Graphics Memory Bandwidth: 380 GB/s
• Graphics Memory Speed: 19 Gbps
• Graphics Output: HDMI 2.1, DP2.1 up to UHBR 13.5, DP2.1 up to UHBR 10
• Max Resolution (HDMI): 7680 x 4320@120Hz
• Max Resolution (DP): 7680 x 4320@60Hz

Intel Battlemage Features and Enhancements

Based on the specs and Intel’s official information, there are considerable architectural enhancements that can elevate the experience of using Battlemage graphic cards for users. Let’s dive deep into the key features and enhancements of Intel Battlemage:

1440p Output

Typically, when users want to buy AMD or NVIDIA graphics cards for 1440p output, the price would reach above $350. Cards with lower prices are mostly suitable for 1080p resolution.

However, thankfully, Arc B580 is a pleasant rarity for people on a budget who are looking for 1440p gaming. According to Steam’s November 2024 Hardware & Software Survey, just under 20% of users are choosing this resolution for their primary display, making it the fastest growing resolution among gamers. With a graphics clock of 2670 MHz, and a great increase in memory to 12GB of GDDR6, the Arc B580 has what it takes to offer satisfying 1440p performance.

The early tests indicate that thanks to the increased VRAM capacity, Arc B580 can effectively avoid stutters and provide a consistent frame rate of around 60 frames per second, for games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Returnal on 1440p mode.

Of course, more demanding games, such as Black Myth: Wukong and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, won’t be playable at 60fps on 1440p. After all, we can’t expect that from a budget graphics card. 

Enhanced Ray Tracing Units

Intel’s Arc B580 and Arc B570 utilize next-generation Xe2 microarchitecture, which provides improved efficiency and performance compared to the first-generation Arc architecture.

The architecture and various improved specifications, such as Ray Tracing Units, can offer better-than-expected performance when ray tracing is on. This improvement in ray tracing brings the Intel Battlemage GPUs on even footing with the likes of NVIDIA’s RTX 4060.

XeSS2 Frame Generation

Seemingly, as a response to NVIDIA’s DLSS 3, Intel provides new features to boost the performance of its graphic cards. With XeSS 2 Frame generation, Intel takes advantage of AI to generate frames between real frames to enhance the output image and its smoothness.

Based on the official information from Intel, this feature can raise the frame rate from 2.8x to 3.9x in various modes, such as Quality, Balanced, Performance, and Ultra Performance.

For now, Intel has announced 10 games that support and will support the XeSS2 feature, including:

• F1 24
• Assassin’s Creed: Shadows
• Harry Potter Quidditch: Champions
• Robocop: Rogue City
• Citadels
• Killing Floor III
• Marvel Rivals
• Ascendant
• Dying Light 2: Stay Human
• Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii

Xe Low Latency (XeLL)

Xe Low Latency works alongside XeSS2 Frame Generation in order to lower the latency as much as possible. AMD and NVIDIA offer similar technologies, and now Intel joins the race. Intel claims that XeLL can improve responsiveness by up to 45%.

This feature will improve the speed of inputs to the CPU, then render queue, then GPU, and finally, to the display. Users can also enable a driver-based low latency mode from the graphics settings to boost the responsiveness.

Xe Media Engine

Intel, with its leading Xe Media engine, provides high-quality and fast video playback and multimedia creation. The Xe Media engine offers expansive hardware encode and decode codec support, including:

• 265 4:2:2 10-bit
• 264
• AV1
• VP9

New Intel Graphics Software

The new Intel graphics software adds key features that were the top requests from the users of Intel graphics cards. This includes specific display settings, such as the scaling model, scaling method, and quantization range. Moreover, the Intel 3D graphics settings allow users to easily enable FPS limiter and Low latency mode.

To make it easier for users to overclock their graphic cards, Intel has added overclocking controls directly in the Intel graphics app. All the settings are presented with simple toggles and interactive bars. This ensures that everyone (including those with limited technical knowledge) can tweak them and find the best settings based on their use case.

The settings include highly requested voltage limit, power limit, frequency offset, memory speed, temperature limit of the GPU, and target speed of the fan. So, using these user-friendly options, users can tune the GPU, VRAM, and fan. Then, if they’d like, it’s possible to reset the settings back to default with just one click.

Take note that altering clock frequency and voltage may void your product’s warranty and reduce the security, stability, and performance of the component. So, we recommend only using the overclocking settings if you are familiar with them or have consulted Intel’s experts about the limits.

AI Acceleration with XMX

Intel Arc Battlemage graphic cards come with another smart feature called Xe Matrix eXtensions (XMX). It’s a collection of integrated AI engines that offers many benefits for Intel’s graphics card users.

With 16 times the computing power to handle AI inferencing operations, compared to traditional GPU vector units, XMX is an essential part of the Xe architecture. The key benefits of XMX include:

• AI Enhanced Gaming: XMX utilizes AI acceleration to improve the smoothness of the gameplay and reduces the GPU’s rendering workload to allow higher framers per second alongside high resolution. XMX also can help with in-game physics simulations, environmental changes, and other complex systems.
• Content Creation: XMX speeds up AI-driven tools and workflows to help users create content faster. It can enable faster rendering for video editing, accelerate auto-enhancements in image editing, and automate tasks in 3D modeling and rendering.
• Media Generation: XMX also accelerates tools that generate AI content. This includes speeding up AI art and animation generation and enhancing the speed of text-to-video, text-to-audio, and other audio and video generation processes.

GPU Showdown: Who’s Rendering the Best Performance?

While Intel is releasing the next-gen Battlemage graphic cards, its competitors are hard at work preparing their newest GPUs to push the boundaries with innovation and competitive specs.

Intel has been trying to step up the competition with NVIDIA and AMD. All things considered, it appears that the Arc B-Series graphics cards are solid products that can challenge NVIDIA and AMD’s market share.

Considering the Intel Battlemage release date, and the rumors about the other two competitors, 2025 is most certainly going to be an interesting year for GPU enthusiasts.

NVIDIA 50 Series

NVIDIA has been teasing us about the RTX 50 Series, but the official announcement is still eluding us. All the signs point to January 2025 and the CES 2025 event, for this all-important announcement.

Until then, we can speculate that NVIDIA will probably use Blackwell architecture, and there will likely be multiple models targeting different audiences and budget levels. We’ll have to wait for official details to see if NVIDIA offers a budget mid-range GPU to compete with Intel’s Arc Battlemage. 

AMD’s RDNA 4

Rumors say that AMD is going to focus on budget-friendly mid-range GPUs with the next big launch. So, there is some potential to witness a fascinating competition between AMD and Intel for the best budget GPU in the market.

However, it is unlikely that AMD will drop the high-end market completely. Especially when it comes to the face-off with NVIDIA over ray tracing capabilities. Therefore, we might even see this brand competing on multiple levels in the coming year. Either way, it is clear: the new Battlemage technology will have quite the fight ahead of it, upon its release. 

Arc B580 vs Arc B570

Both models are budget-friendly options that, based on their specifications, can offer satisfying gaming and rendering experiences, at a fair price tag.

Overall, Arc B580 will offer better performance considering more Xe-cores and higher memory. However, Arc B570 will be a more affordable and power-efficient option. Here is the direct comparison of key elements for both models: 

Power, Performance, and Price: A Few Final Thoughts

Overall, the newest Intel Arc Battlemage graphics cards show great potential to become a favorite among users on a budget who are looking for a capable GPU. Thanks to next-generation Xe2 architecture, AI acceleration, Low Latency mode, and enhanced Memory, Intel Battlemage Arc B-Series can already be considered a powerful competitor to the new series of GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Intel Battlemage suitable for 1440p gaming?

The Arc B580 model is actually built for 1440p gaming. Despite its very affordable price, thanks to the Xe2 architecture and 12GB of GDDR6 memory, it can handle most modern games with 1440p resolution and 60 frames per second performance. 

How does the Arc B580 perform against other GPUs?

Early tests show that Arc B580 can perform considerably better than Arc A750 and mostly at the same level as RTX 4060. However, in some games, such as Cyberpunk 2077, it can perform much better than RTX 4060.

Which one is better, Arc B580 or Arc B570?

With more Xe-cores, Graphics Clock, and higher memory, Arc B580 is undoubtedly the more powerful option of the pair. With that said, the B570, as a $219 graphics card with lower power consumption, is a fantastic option for budget gaming.

When is the release date of Intel Battlemage GPUs?

The Arc B580 model was released on December 13, 2024, and the Arc B570 model will be available on January 16, 2025.