Introduction

Intel today debuted its second generation of modern discrete gaming GPUs, the Arc B-series, named after the "Battlemage" graphics architecture they are based on.


Today's launch from Intel covers the Arc B580, and the Arc B570. Both cards are priced under $250, making them performance-segment, middle-of-the-market products, with a focus on 1080p through 1440p gaming with ray tracing enabled. The company claims to have made significant gains in the performance and efficiency of its GPUs, and says that the Arc B580 should offer comparable raster 3D performance to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060, but with superior performance than the NVIDIA card with ray tracing enabled, or in common generative AI workloads.



If you recall, last time around, Intel's flagship A770 "Alchemist" competed with the GeForce RTX 3060 "Ampere," and the mid-tier SKU, the A580, went up against the RTX 3050. With its successor, the B580, going against the RTX 4060, Intel seems to have stepped up performance generationally enough, that its upcoming maxed out successor to the A770 might go up against higher models in the NVIDIA RTX 40-series, at competitive prices. From the AMD camp, the Arc B580 should offer raster 3D performance in the league of the Radeon RX 7600 XT, but with better ray tracing and generative AI performance. Besides the two new GPU models, Intel is also introducing new software technologies today, including the XeSS 2 upscaling technology, and XeSS Frame Generation—an AI-based framerate doubling technology that's closer in form to DLSS 3 than it is to FSR 3 Frame Generation. The company is also introducing the XeLL (Xe Low Latency) whole-system latency reduction technology, something that's needed for XeSS Frame Generation to work, but can also be used as a standalone feature.

In this preview article, we give you a quick look at the new Xe2 Battlemage gaming graphics architecture, and unbox the new Arc B580 graphics card.