The new king of $250 GPUs (for now)

When Intel introduced its first Arc video cards two years ago, I was more than a little skeptical. Could a company that abandoned its last major desktop GPU project in 2009 really make a dent in a market dominated by NVIDIA and AMD? Well, when I reviewed them in 2022, the Arc A750 and A770 turned out better than I thought, although they were also held back by Intel’s poor drivers. But it seems that Intel has learned from its mistakes.

The new $250 Arc B580 performs better than AMD’s lower-end Radeon 7600, and may even mess with NVIDIA a bit when it comes to budget ray tracing. The only question is whether it’s worth investing in an Intel graphics card given its difficult corporate prospects. But for such a cheap video card, with a price that dates back to the early 2000s, the risk may be worth it.

Intel

Intel’s Arc B580 is a rarity: a $250 GPU that delivers solid 1080p and 1440p gaming, even with a bit of ray tracing.

Advantages

• Faster than a Radeon 7600 and RTX 4060
• XeSS upgrade works fine
• Cool, quiet performance
• Only $250

Cons

• XeSS does not have as much support as DLSS 3
• The new AMD cards can surpass it

$250 at Newegg

The B580 marks the debut of Intel’s second-generation Arc Xe2 GPUs, and will be joined next month by the $219 B570. Based on their specs alone, it’s easy to see why they’re attractive for budget gaming. The B580 features 20 Xe cores, 20 ray tracing units, and a faster clock speed than previous Arc cards. Most importantly, though, it has 12GB of VRAM with a 192-bit memory interface, giving you more than enough space to play games at 1440p.

By comparison, the $299 NVIDIA RTX 4060 has 8GB of VRAM and a much more limited 128-bit interface. Even the RTX 4060 Ti has that meager amount of VRAM, limiting both GPUs to mostly 1080p gaming (especially if you want some ray tracing). AMD’s Radeon RX 7600, which costs around $269, also features 8GB of RAM and weaker ray tracing performance than cards from NVIDIA and Intel.

While Intel has a clear advantage in hardware, timing is once again a major concern. The Arc B580 was launched as we prepare for CES 2025, where both NVIDIA and AMD are expected to show off new desktop GPUs. Given NVIDIA’s ever-increasing prices, I wouldn’t bet on seeing an RTX 5060 around $250, but AMD is another story. It has been trying to make an impact in the low and mid-range GPU market for years, and That is reportedly still the case. with their RDNA 4 cards. It’s very likely that we’ll eventually see some sort of next-gen budget GPU from AMD.

However, if you need to build a budget-friendly gaming rig in the coming months, the Arc B580 will serve you well. In my tests, it scored slightly higher than the RTX 4060 Ti in 3DMark’s Timespy Extreme Benchmark, and was also noticeably faster than the Radeon 7600. The B580 shined even more with ray tracing. I averaged 58 fps on the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark running at 1080p with Ultra graphics settings and mid-range ray tracing. The Radeon 7600, on the other hand, sometimes struggled to stay above 40 fps with similar settings.

I was very surprised at how well the Arc B580 handled 1440p gaming. In Dragon Age: The Veil Guard, I averaged 70 fps with high graphics settings, mid-range ray tracing, and Intel’s XeSS enhancement enabled. That’s better performance than you’ll see on the $700 PlayStation 5 Pro (although admittedly, Sony’s improved PSSR AI might look better in your eyes). I also averaged 85 fps while gaming infinite halo at 1440p with maximum graphics, which was slightly better than the 4060 Ti. While we’re used to budget cards being limited primarily to 1080p gaming, the Arc B580’s extra memory clearly makes it well suited for 1440p.

Still, there are benefits that competition offers. NVIDIA’s RTX GPUs can also work with its specialized applications, such as NVIDIA Broadcaster, which can clean up your audio and video for streaming and recording. Additionally, NVIDIA’s DLSS 3 enhancement is available in over 500 games, while Intel’s XeSS just broke 200. And then there’s the driver issue: NVIDIA has decades of experience creating solid GPU software, while Intel is still recovering from its recent driver missteps. At least the XeSS 2 AI boost seems more useful than AMD’s FSR 3 (FidelityFX Super Resolution), as Intel’s technology looks dramatically better and can often boost a game’s performance by 30 percent or more .

The Arc B580 also survived several hours of benchmark testing and gaming without any hardware or driver issues. When I first tested the Arc A750 and A770, they often crashed within an hour of testing. Intel’s software has clearly made some progress. The B580 reference model I tested also stayed relatively cool under load, never exceeding 64 degrees Celsius (which also kept its two large fans from making too much noise). While there will be third-party cards available, I was also impressed with Intel’s reference design: the B580 feels premium and sturdy, not cheap and plasticky like many other budget GPUs.

At this point, it seems that Intel is already having problems keeping the Arc B580 in stocka rare good problem for the embattled chip giant. It’s easy to see why gamers are in love: it offers solid 1080p and 1440p performance for most new titles, even with a bit of ray tracing. Finally, there’s a viable $250 GPU that doesn’t make you feel like you’re desperately behind the pack. It’s a clear victory for Intel, at least until we see what’s new from AMD.