“Battlemage is next” says Intel, and one leaked $250 GPU could make Nvidia’s RTX 4060 look like a waste of money

Everything we’ve seen lately points towards Intel launching its new Battlemage graphics cards in December, and now even Intel is teasing it. In a recent video posted to the Intel Technology channel on YouTube, Intel Fellow Tom A Petersen breaks down the new Xe2 GPU architecture, chiefly talking about the ‘Lunar Lake’ Core Ultra 200V processors. However, he ends the video by saying “stay tuned, Battlemage is next.“

There have been plenty of rumors and speculation about the Intel Battlemage release date, and it seems all but confirmed that it’s just around the corner. Most recently, the mid-range Arc B580 leaked online with a $250 price tag, and we think it may represent one of the value options in the next generation.

Leaked Intel Arc B580 GPU may cost just $250

Intel is just ahead of Nvidia and AMD, both of which are expected to launch the RTX 50 series and RX 8000 series respectively in early 2025. With that in mind, we can only really compare the new Battlemage GPUs to what is currently on the market. It’s unlikely that Intel will be challenging for the high-end, but the ~$300 range is where they’ll look to excel. A recent retailer leak spotted by momomo_us on X reveals that the B580 (successor to the Arc 5 A580) may cost around $250 – notably cheaper than the RTX 4060’s $299 MSRP.

And, a recent benchmark leak would suggest this graphics card sits around the 4060-4060Ti level, except it boasts higher 12GB VRAM as standard. Based on that, we think the B580 could be one of the best budget GPUs in the upcoming generation. Intel doesn’t hold much of the market share as far as GPUs go, but Battlemage could help give them a boost and it all looks promising so far. On top of that, its XeSS upscaling tech recently hit a milestone with over 200 games now supported.

Nvidia’s RTX 4060 isn’t always seen as the best value for money, especially if all you seek is a budget 1080p GPU. When we reviewed the 4060, the ASUS ROG Strix model we tested certainly fits into the “overpriced” category. Its main selling point to us is the excellent efficiency and access to DLSS 3 Frame Generation, but its 8GB VRAM is slowly becoming out of date for some demanding modern games. The jump up to 12GB should become the new entry-level standard in many people’s eyes.

How the RTX 4060 performs

If you’re interested in RTX 4060 benchmarks, we put some together when we reviewed it. Testing performance at 1080p and 1440p, it fared well in a number of different games and achieved consistent 60+ FPS at FHD. We could see similar performance from the B580, and its 12GB VRAM should give it a little extra headroom at higher resolutions – though this is yet to be determined. We’ll know for sure once it launches, assumedly next month.