ASRock Arc A580 Challenger

[W1zzard]

ASRock's Arc A580 Challenger is a custom-design variant of Intel's newest GPU release. It comes with a powerful triple-slot, dual-fan cooling solution that achieves whisper-quiet noise levels and good temperatures. Considering the attractive price of just $180, performance is good, too.

Show full review

 

[Chaitanya]

Any plans to see how the AV1 capabilties of this GPU compared to competition, at that price point it would be a good option for video encode duties.

 

[W1zzard]

Any plans to see how the AV1 capabilties of this GPU compared to competition, at that price point it would be a good option for video encode duties.

No plans at this time. What do you encode and why do you need AV1? (honest question)

 

[progste]

Used market has some alternatives with better price/performance

This point seems a bit weird since it could be said for basically every card on the market.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

This point seems a bit weird since it could be said for basically every card on the market.

I think it is valid in this cards case more than some others though anyone who can't go above 200usd must be really pinching some pennies so something like a used 6600 for 150usd might be the answer especially when that could be put towards the rest of the platform assuming the person is building a system.

MSI AMD Radeon RX 6600 MECH 2X 8GB GDDR6 Graphics Card for sale online | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for MSI AMD Radeon RX 6600 MECH 2X 8GB GDDR6 Graphics Card at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

I think when people start breaking the 300+ barrier warranty is likely more important although I would argue people who are pinching pennies that badly likely need the warranty even more but I can at least see why a product in this segment might be more in the range where consumers might choose a used alternative for significantly cheaper that either slightly outperforms it or maybe even decently outperforms it not up to date on the used market so couldn't say.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Hmm, sorry for off. Arc series has tremendous results in 4K. A770 16GB win in 90% of games. Maybe when drivers got +2-3 newer versions will win in 100% of games.

 

[Chaitanya]

No plans at this time. What do you encode and why do you need AV1? (honest question)

Mostly for videos that I upload to youtube, also given files sizes are smaller with AV1 it would be economical(in terms of storage) to convert videos from my camera.

 

[Assimilator]

My take is that the price being so close to A750 is that that card was very close to the territory of making Intel go into the red for what it has to pay TSMC, and this die-harvested model is even closer. Given the increased complexity and higher-quality components of the Intel GPUs compared to NVIDIA and AMD, I really wonder if there is any room left to drop to around that magic $150 mark, at which point this card would be something of a no-brainer, which... is kinda shocking for me to say. But the driver maturity that a year has brought is the magic here, and we can only wonder how much better the 7-series would've been received if Intel had taken that extra time.

My only real concern would be the idle power consumption, which is even worse than AMD - quite the feat. Let's hope Intel will address that next, and that it doesn't take another year...

Oh, and of course, the drivers are still a long way away from good. The last two versions (4824 and 4672) have reintroduced the dwm.exe memory leak bug; it's currently sitting at over 10GB memory consumed on my TGL GT1 IGP.

 

[Lew Zealand]

My only real concern would be the idle power consumption, which is even worse than AMD - quite the feat. Let's hope Intel will address that next, and that it doesn't take another year...

Time to update your data, AMD and Nvidia consume similar idle power:

 

[Denver]

I think it is valid in this cards case more than some others though anyone who can't go above 200usd must be really pinching some pennies so something like a used 6600 for 150usd might be the answer especially when that could be put towards the rest of the platform assuming the person is building a system.

MSI AMD Radeon RX 6600 MECH 2X 8GB GDDR6 Graphics Card for sale online | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for MSI AMD Radeon RX 6600 MECH 2X 8GB GDDR6 Graphics Card at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

I think when people start breaking the 300+ barrier warranty is likely more important although I would argue people who are pinching pennies that badly likely need the warranty even more but I can at least see why a product in this segment might be more in the range where consumers might choose a used alternative for significantly cheaper that either slightly outperforms it or maybe even decently outperforms it not up to date on the used market so couldn't say.

Honestly, I think the warranty is worth more than saving a few bucks, at the end of the day you have no way of knowing the condition of this hardware and whether it will serve you for 2 weeks or 2 years, so it's a foolish economy that throws you adrift in the boat called "luck".

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Honestly, I think the warranty is worth more than saving a few bucks, at the end of the day you have no way of knowing the condition of this hardware and whether it will serve you for 2 weeks or 2 years, so it's a foolish economy that throws you adrift in the boat called "luck".

I do as well but I still find this cards inconsistency, need of resizable bar, and high power consumption a tough sell over spending slightly more on something else regardless.

Who in 2023 is even upgrading to this 570/580 owners maybe. I doubt 1060/1050ti owners would even bite on this.

 

[Assimilator]

Time to update your data, AMD and Nvidia consume similar idle power:

AMD's problem is multi-monitor power consumption.

 

[Karath]

With the performance being so close to the other G10 cards, something is seriously amiss in the silicon or drivers. Some games show the expected A770 -12% = A750 and A770 - 25% = A580, but in others its much closer.

Over in the Arc discord we had found that Arc is VERY sensitive to CPU performance. So much so that games like Fallout 4 has FPS issues on modern mainstream CPUs where AMD/NV can run the game perfectly fine. On an 5800 X3D system the FPS using Arc could be 40% faster than something like a 5700G, while there was no noticable performance difference when using a similarly performing AMD/NV card. To the point where a RX 5500 XT was outperforming an A770 on the slower CPU.

 

[trsttte]

Another reason to launch this is to grab headlines and mindshare so Intel GPU's don't get completely forgotten.

It's a pity they weren't able to launch everything sooner, whatever the driver state was. They lost a lot of potential market when GPUs were scarse, the drivers would be worse but given how fast they improved with user feedback and how starved for cards the market was they could have really stolen the show. Instead they tried (and failed) to mature the drivers more and launched at a time when the market situation was improving and where they couldn't really compete.

we can only wonder how much better the 7-series would've been received if Intel had taken that extra time.

I think they already took way much more time than they should. The drivers were bad and would have been worse if they launched sooner but they had a window wide open to disrupt the market and they'd get a ton of sympathy by being a new comer trying to help gamers out in a time when there was no hardware available. They completely wasted a unique opportunity to enter the market in full swing, instead when they finally launched there were alternatives and if not for discounts and massive bundles their cards were almost unsellable.

 

[Haile Selassie]

AMD's problem is multi-monitor power consumption.

It's because they apparently cannot reduce DRAM clock speed without flickering and artifacting in 2D load. Something that they can with HBM style card (think Vega), but not on the GDDR type.

 

[THU31]

It's kind of astonishing that they can sell a card with a 406 mm2 die and a 256-bit bus for less than $200 and still make a profit, even if on an older process. NVIDIA and AMD must be swimming in margins.

This is actually a very good card, they have improved the drivers so much. The power draw is horrible, though. Half the performance of a 4070 while drawing more power. It's still a tolerable amount of heat output, but just barely.

It seems that the architecture is just extremely inefficient. The RX 7600 has the same performance as a A770 at half the die size on the same node. That's insane.

What could they achieve with Battlemage? To compete with the upper mid-range they would probably have to get close to 300 W, and for me that's unacceptable no matter how good the price was.

I do hope they stick with it, but I fear they will only be able to compete below my preferred tier of performance.

 

[Solaris17]

What could they achieve with Battlemage?

To be honest, the drivers now is what they should have been at launch. They are so so so much better. I have high hopes with battlemage, celestial and druid barring any crazy driver re-tooling that is needed for the architecture changes. The reception at the very least should be a lot better. Which is great imo, because I consider the reception of ARC already to have been great, more so because people were happy with a third competitor then actual performance. Atleast at the time.

 

[ARF]

NVIDIA and AMD must be swimming in margins.

I doubt AMD can break even given the tape out costs and R&D costs. They sell so few cards, that those can't appear on the Steam hardware survey, or if some appear, they have 0.something share, 1.something share.

Steam Hardware & Software Survey

It seems that the architecture is just extremely inefficient.
What could they achieve with Battlemage?

Alchemist is their first attempt in designing a specialised high-performance graphics architecture.
If they have the right engineers, Battlemage should be a significant improvement.

 

[Assimilator]

It's because they apparently cannot reduce DRAM clock speed without flickering and artifacting in 2D load. Something that they can with HBM style card (think Vega), but not on the GDDR type.

Andf yet NVIDIA has no issues doing this, nor have they had these issues for years.

 

[Haile Selassie]

I would say it has something to do with their implementation of the ring bus and DDR PHY.

 

[Solaris17]

Andf yet NVIDIA has no issues doing this, nor have they had these issues for years.

I would say it has something to do with their implementation of the ring bus and DDR PHY.

I think so too. I know AMD (nvidia?) had this issue IIRC and eventually fixed it, and nvidia keeps RAM speed at steps above there GPU core clock. I would make an assumption that Intel doesn't have this clock domain linking implemented or completely tuned for low clock scenarios.

 

[Denver]

I doubt AMD can break even given the tape out costs and R&D costs. They sell so few cards, that those can't appear on the Steam hardware survey, or if some appear, they have 0.something share, 1.something share.

View attachment 317071

Steam Hardware & Software Survey

Alchemist is their first attempt in designing a specialised high-performance graphics architecture.
If they have the right engineers, Battlemage should be a significant improvement.

Sony and Microsoft helped fund the development of RDNA2, it must be paying for itself, added to the high-volume sales for servers and supercomputers it should be enough to make a profit. AMD is a great company due to its synergistic combination in different areas that complement each other, this makes them a unique company. Btw if it were to depend only on gaming GPUs, it would have already gone bankrupt.

Changing the subject back to the product under review, I'm almost certain that Intel sells these (US$180) GPUs at a loss, even with TSMC's excellent yields this is still a huge 400mm chip and should only get about 90-100 usable per wafer, so $90-100 just for the chip. This is terrible, considering that the 4080 chip only costs about $150-160.

 

[PapaTaipei]

On which univers does the writer of this review finds 1080ti at 170 dollars???

 

[lukart]

Looks like Asrock did a good job on their Challanger A580, same 2 fan configuration as Sparkle but much better thermals and noise.
At this price, the card is very option for 1080p gaming and intel is also doing really good progress with their drivers, big price improvements on every driver release.

 

[Denver]

On which univers does the writer of this review finds 1080ti at 170 dollars???

Probably on ebay. With performance dropping below the 6600 why would anyone be interested even if it costs $170...