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Sparkle Intel Arc B570 Guardian OC review – a great value for money GPU in its own right

We're checking out what the second Battlemage GPU can do with this B570 review
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Reviewed By: Sebastian Kozlowski

Sparkle Intel Arc B570 Guardian OC review – a great value for money GPU in its own right
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The new wave of Intel Arc GPUs started a while back, and actually went down very well…surprisingly well, in fact. The B580 managed to score high marks with those looking for an affordable card which worked well for 1440p gaming, and it even seemed like it slotted nicely into a gap in the market too.

Now, we’ve managed to get our hands on the latest from the Intel Arc series, thanks to the folks at Sparkle. This card is an even more affordable option to the B580 and, therefore, likely to be less powerful on the whole. What I’m interested to see is if this card actually has a place in the wider GPU market, and what exactly it brings to the table. The good folks at Sparkle provided this B570, so let’s see how it stands up to our testing.

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  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 box, Image by PC Guide
  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 box, Image by PC Guide
  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 box, Image by PC Guide
  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 box, Image by PC Guide
  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 box, Image by PC Guide
  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 box, Image by PC Guide
  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 IO, Image by PC Guide
  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 left fan, Image by PC Guide
  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 power side, Image by PC Guide
Highly Recommended
Specifications
  • GPU: BMG-G21
  • Cores : 18
  • Shading units: 2,304
  • VRAM: 10GB GDDR6
  • Memory bus width: 160-bit
  • Bandwidth: 380GB/s
  • Base/boost clock speed: 2,500MHz/2,660MHz
What We Think

Like its older brother, the Arc B570 is a strong budget graphics card that sweeps up the entry-level competition. It has an excellent performance at 1080p and very playable average frame rates across the board, plus, it even does well at most heavy duty rendering tasks too.

With the price point so close to the B850, I think it’s worth going for the level up, but if you’re sticking to a budget and want something that delivers serious bang for your buck, the B570 is a great shout.

Reasons to Buy
  • Strong value option of a GPU
  • 10GB of VRAM onboard
  • Excellent 1080p performance
  • Great encode/decode support
  • Impressive compact design
Reasons to Avoid
  • Priced too close to the B580
  • Requires ReBar to work
  • Along with PCIe 4 x8 can struggle on older platforms
  • 1440p becomes out of reach

B570 Price

The Intel Arc B570 was geared up to be less expensive than the B580, coming in around $30 less with an MSRP of $219. Our specific model, the Sparkle Guardian OC, is available for a bit more than MSRP as it costs $230/£249.

That is a relatively aggressive price point for the budget GPU market. It was released below the lowest available Nvidia and AMD cards. The RTX 4060 had a price tag of $299, and the RX 7600 was set to $269. This means that if the performance is there to match, it would very much be a strong value proposition.

Key specs

SpecArc B570Arc B580Arc A750
MicroarchitectureXe2Xe2Xe HPG
LithographyTSMC N5TSMC N5TSMC N6
Xe-cores182028
Render slices557
Ray tracing units182028
Xe vector engines144160448
Graphics Clock2,500MHz2,670MHz2,050MHz
GPU Peak TOPS203233229
TBP150W190W225W
PCIe version4.0 x84.0 x84.0 x16
Memory10GB GDDR612GB GDDR68GB GDDR6
Memory Interface/Speed/Bandwidth160-bit/19Gbps/380GB/s192-bit/19Gbps/456GB/s256-bit/16Gbps/512GB/s
Video outputsHDMI 2.1, DP 2.1HDMI 2.1, DP 2.1HDMI 2.1, DP 2.0
Launch price$219$249/£249$289
Launch DateJanuary 2025December 2024October 2022
Arc B570 and other GPU specs, Source Intel

The B570’s specs take the improvements of the Battlemage architecture and scale them down from the B580. This primarily results in a drop in two Xe-cores and ray tracing units, leading to a decline in 16 vector engines and likely a drop in performance.

That is also the case for the factory graphics clock, which falls 170MHz even with fewer cores onboard, lowering the speed and total board power. The smaller card is now rated at 150W, dropping the power consumption by 30W compared to the B580.

The B570’s memory setup also takes a cut. It stays on the same generation but loses 2GB of capacity and implements a slower bus width, leading to a more drastic drop in VRAM bandwidth down to 380GB/s. Otherwise, the video output and PCIe version are kept the same across the two models.

Design

The Sparkle Guardian OC is a very polished and straightforward graphics card design. It comes in an Intel blue colorway, enveloping it all around. It is highlighted with a couple of darker patches and a lot of grey in the fans used on the card itself.

The front of the card has just two fans, keeping it short and small. The fans boldly stand out with their gray coloring rounded off with a couple of white lines outlining them. But it doesn’t just come as a rectangular box; it rounds off the edges to not give it an entirely flat design.

As for the side that will face your case side panel, it has a rather tall blue wall blocking off the heatsink behind it. Rising up around halfway. It does name the card and brand, but it’s a surprise to see so much airflow restriction on its side. The same is true for the right end opposite the IO, which is covered and has just two small slits to allow some airflow to escape.

The backplate is made of metal and offers good heat dissipation and cooling capability, despite it seemingly limiting airflow through the card itself via the fans. There is a small opening on the backplate to allow for airflow, which may seem counterintuitive, but then again the card itself doesn’t nessariliy require cooling to the level of top-end GPUs.

The IO cover has relatively more cutouts, allowing it to get that heat away from the card and out of the system. All of that combines to make a relatively robust build. I tried to flex the card, but it proved very sturdy while not too heavy. Plus, only having one power connector makes it all the easier to install in the smaller builds without any issues or worries.

Performance

Putting the card into our testing lab, I could find out what kind of performance it could achieve. I have many options With gaming and synthetic tests in our lineup. So, putting it into our test bench outlined below, I see what it could do and how it differed from the B580 and RTX 4060.

  • Motherboard: ASUS ProArt X670E-CREATOR WIFI
  • CPU: Ryzen 7 7800X3D
  • RAM: Corsair Dominator Titanium RGB (64GB, 6600MT/s, CL32)
  • CPU Cooler: ROG RYUJIN III 360
  • PSU: 1000W Phanteks

Gaming

First, the gaming performances, frame rates, and 1% of the frames the card achieves in various games across the three standard resolutions of 1080p, 1440p, and 4k. That way, I can see how it holds up and what kind of monitor you can use it with to get a good performance depending on the framerate and refresh rate it can achieve.

Throughout these games, the B570 falls behind the B580, unsurprisingly, instead trading blows with the RTX 4060 in the various titles. Most of the time, there’s not much of an average frame rate between the two as they are instead on par. The Nvidia card takes advantage of ray-tracing scenarios and gets a boost. On the other hand, it loses out when running out of VRAM, considering it has 2GB less than the B570.

When comparing it to the Sparkle B580, its deficit does vary depending on the game and workload. Looking at the average FPS differences, the B570 loses 9-14% in CS2, 10-25 in Cyberpunk 2077, and 7-23% in Doom Eternal, with 4K ray tracing running out of VRAM to succeed. Then 17-25% in Assassin’s Creed Mirage, about 15% in Indiana Jones The Great Circle, and 15-20% in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

Synthetics and rendering

I then put it through the synthetics and rendering suite of benchmarks and got a much more direct comparison to the B580 and RTX 4060.

The rendering capabilities of the GPU in 3DMark fall in between the two others. Dropping between 16-12% from what the B580 offers yet still leading ahead of the RTX 4060. In Blender, that does flip around rather quickly. Nvidia’s prowess in the 3D render performance shoots ahead, doubling the B570’s score, which falls around 20% compared to the B580.

As for Handbrake’s results, Intel’s cards achieve the same results, not dependent on which GPU you have. The QSV or VCN encodes a similar result that takes a minute or three to complete, depending on which mode you pick, with an average FPS of around 320 and 98 from the two modes.

Alternatives

If the Arc B570 isn’t entirely up to your speed, or you’re wondering what level it sits at, I’ve got a few GPUs that I recommend checking out. These lower-end AMD and Nvidia cards come close to the price and performance of the Intel option.

The RTX 4060 is the first of the options. At the time of writing, the lowest entry from Nvidia is still on the Ada generation of GPUs since the initial RTX 50 series launch is currently only for top-level graphics cards. So, we might have to wait a bit longer for the Blackwell entry-level options to be launched.

However, having reviewed the RTX 4060, we know it’s a good 1080p and 1440p gaming graphics card at the entry-level. However, it also comes in with an $80 higher MSRP while falling behind in performance in most scenarios, so it might not be the best value for money.

On the other hand, there is the RX 7600 from AMD, with a slightly closer price point at $269 and a rough performance between the B570 and B580. However, there is also the fact that it sits with a lower spec of memory and might get more limited by higher resolutions, as we saw happen with the RTX 4060 in our performance tests.

Verdict

  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 box, Image by PC Guide
  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 box, Image by PC Guide
  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 box, Image by PC Guide
  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 box, Image by PC Guide
  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 box, Image by PC Guide
  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 box, Image by PC Guide
  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 IO, Image by PC Guide
  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 left fan, Image by PC Guide
  • Sparkle Intel Arc B570 power side, Image by PC Guide
Highly Recommended
Specifications
  • GPU: BMG-G21
  • Cores : 18
  • Shading units: 2,304
  • VRAM: 10GB GDDR6
  • Memory bus width: 160-bit
  • Bandwidth: 380GB/s
  • Base/boost clock speed: 2,500MHz/2,660MHz

On its own, the B570 offers a great budget gaming experience. It performs well across all types of gaming and is a good option for most rendering uses too. It is quite close to the B850 in terms of price, and in all honesty, I think stretching to an extra few dollars for a better overall card would be what most people would choose, but that being said, as a card in its own right, it’s excellent value for money and well worth considering for a budget build.

About the Author

With a fascination for technology and games, Seb is a tech writer with a focus on hardware and deals. He is also the primary tester and reviewer at BGFG and PCGuide.