Just two days ago, Intel launched its new generation of discrete graphics cards – namely Intel Battlemage (otherwise known as the B-Series). The first of the series to be released will be the Intel Arc B580 on December 13th, 2024. While there are no hands-on reviews yet to turn to for performance benchmarks, Intel’s own results can be referenced – specifically, those that don’t utilize XeSS upscaling, as that would skew results.
Based on rasterization (i.e. no upscaling used) results, it seems as if the Arc B580 is a close match for the RX 6700 XT in a few different games. Finding the RX 6700 XT for a great price these days is pretty difficult, so much so that the newer, refreshed, RX 6750 XT is what we’d recommend instead at the $300 mark.
Intel Arc B580 should be a close match to the RX 6700 XT in certain games
Pre-release benchmarks from Tech YES (based on Intel’s announcement numbers mixed with some self-testing) give us a good indication of what the Arc B580 will best compare to. AMD’s RX 6700 XT has long been an excellent-value graphics card for 1440p, and the B580 is also targeting this range – also with 12GB of VRAM.
In Strange Brigade and Borderlands 3 at 1440p ultra settings, the cards should perform almost identically, while the 6700 XT pulls ahead in Baldur’s Gate 3. This is promising news for the B580 considering it will be around $50 cheaper with an MSRP of $249.
However, not all games are equal and it seems that AMD has the better spread in terms of support – Intel’s driver support is something that always feels like it has some catching up to do versus AMD and Nvidia. For example, Black Ops 6 saw less than stellar performance at launch with Intel’s existing Arc GPUs, comparatively. This is further backed up by Tech YES’s tests, with Gears 5 at 1440p ultra settings. The 6700 XT averaged 86 FPS, whereas Intel’s chart shows 71 FPS for the Arc B580 – that’s even lower than the 8GB RTX 4060 which averaged 84-85.
Why not just buy the Radeon RX 6750 XT instead?
The RX 6750 XT isn’t a massive improvement over the 6700 XT all things considered, but it does offer slighter better performance and you can buy one for $300 at the time of writing, whereas the 6700 XT is difficult to find new for cheaper. Intel’s MSRP for the Arc B580 is $249, which does place it significantly cheaper than the 6750 XT, though we’re yet to see exactly how AIBs are priced upon release considering the MSRP is a baseline value.
It’s hard to ignore the fact that Intel is finally rivaling AMD’s low-pricing model with the performance to back it up, but the support for AMD cards is more widespread and should enjoy more consistent performance across a wider range of games. On top of that, tech such as AFMF 2 frame generation available in any relatively modern title, plus FSR 3 is seeing much more support. While XeSS does bring along its own frame generation solution, the 6750 XT feels like the safer bet right now.
XFX Speedster QICK 319 RX 6750 XT
