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.

"Battlemage" Architecture Preview

Both the Arc B580 and B570 are based on the "BMG-G21" a new monolithic silicon built on the TSMC 5 nm EUV process node. The silicon has a die-area of 272 mm², and a transistor count of 19.6 billion. Intel already had a very mature hardware-accelerated real-time ray tracing stack going in with "Alchemist," and this only evolves more with Xe2 "Battlemage." The new graphics architecture relies on higher utilization of hardware resources, improved work distribution among the various logic components of the GPU, and a generational reduction in software overhead (requiring CPU utilization to do things).


The new Xe2 core boasts of a generational IPC increase. There are four of these in a Render Slice, and five Render Slices on the "BMG-G21." Each Xe core has eight 512-bit vector engines, eight 2048-bit XMX matrix engines, support for 64-bit atomic ops, and a large 256 KB L1 cache. The ALUs now support SIMD16 and SIMD32 ops, while the XMX units support data types ranging from INT2, to INT4, INT8, FP16, BF16, and TF32. Intel's second generation Ray Tracing unit features a 50% to 100% increase in hardware throughput, thanks to three traversal pipelines, 18 box intersections, two triangle intersections, and a 16 KB native BVH cache per RT unit. All said and done, Intel is claiming a 70% increase in performance per Xe core, and a 50% increase in performance-per-Watt with "Battlemage."

The 5 Render Slices and 20 Xe cores talk to each other over a next-generation global dispatch unit, and an 18 MB L2 cache. The GPU features a 192-bit GDDR6 memory interface. The odd count of 5 slices and 192-bit memory bus suggests that the BMG-G21 features a sixth render slice and a wider 256-bit interface, but that will probably be used in a higher SKU in the near future.


Then there are updates to XeSS. Intel's super-resolution based performance enhancement on its own improves frame-rates by anywhere between 22% and 80%, depending on the game. In games with ray tracing, XeSS proves crucial in reducing the performance cost of ray tracing. XeSS is available in over 150 games as of now. The company released a minor update to XeSS 1, with the introduction of a new Compute Dispatcher backend for the XeSS-SR SDK, with individual interfaces for DirectX 11, DirectX 12, and Vulkan.


With this release, Intel is introducing the new XeSS 2 feature-set, which consists of XeSS-SR (super resolution), XeSS-FG (frame generation), and XeLL (low latency). XeSS 2 isn't an update to the SR in and of itself—the image quality at any given XeSS setting is the same, but rather, it is a collective of SR, FG, and LL. XeSS-FG is a frame generation technology that seeks to nearly double frame-rates at any given SR setting, or even at native resolution. It relies on optical flow re-projection, and motion-vector re-projection to generate an interpolated frame. In this sense, it is technologically closer to NVIDIA DLSS 3 Frame Generation than it is to AMD FSR 3 Frame Generation.


XeLL is a system latency reduction technology that works to reduce the time it takes for a game input to register on screen. XeSS-FG requires XeLL to be enabled. There's also a new driver-based low-latency mode Intel is introducing, which simply compacts the rendering queue to reduce latency. We will bring you a more detailed architecture deep-dive as we get closer to the product launch.

The complete slide-deck follows, clicking below loads images from the Intel presentation.

Arc B580 Unboxing

Oooooh! A package from Intel, what could it be? Didn't someone say Arc was canceled?


While Arc A-Series Alchemist had just hints of purple, Intel is doubling down on the color this time and I like it.


On the back you learn some basics about the product, and of course the obligatory AI pitch.


As expected, Resizable BAR is required. They also made it clear that AMD's Smart Access Memory, which is just a marketing name for Resizable BAR, is supported, too.


A new seal, so you know that your card really is sealed and nobody else messed with it before.


Wooot, a shiny new GPU!


Love the mention of "odyssey," a term that was coined under previous leadership of their GPU department.


Inside the box you get just the card and a cleaning cloth, which is nicely branded.