Intel has launched two new graphics cards for PC gamers, and the price-to-performance ratio seems to be set up to appeal to many people looking to upgrade their 1080p or 1440p gaming rigs.
These cards are aimed at midrange PCs, and we expect a higher-end card to follow at some point in 2025. Before we discuss what the cards are capable of and where they compare to AMD and Nvidia, let’s unpack Intel’s naming scheme so you can understand where they fall in the lineup.
When the company launched its lineup of ‘Arc’ GPUs in 2022, it started with the A-series, which stood for ‘Alchemist.’ Ranked from least to most powerful, these included the A310, A380, A580, A750, and the A770. Basically, the higher the number, the better the GPU.
The two new cards follow similar number schemes but have a B prefix which signifies that they’re from the ‘Battlemage’ generation. The lower-end option is the B570 and the slighter higher end is the B570. We haven’t tested these cards, but Intel claims that both will be solid options for 1440p gaming. Judging by the amount of VRAM, that should remain true since most other GPUs that aim for this resolution carry similar RAM amounts.
Intel’s press release mentions that both cards support a new form of its XeSS upscaling tech and better ray tracing hardware compared to its previous generation. There are also some enhancements to the GPU to make it better at running generative AI tasks and encoding video files to help editors. It should also be noted that while the launch of the Intel A-Series was rocky, the company has refined its software, and I expect the B-Series to be a lot more stable at launch. If these offer the same price to performance gains as the A-Series, Intel might have a hit on its hands if it can convince gamers to trust them.
Like Nvidia (DLSS), AMD (FSR), and Apple (MetalFX), Intel’s next generation of upscaling tech (XeSS) now supports even more forms of software enhancement for games that support it. The new cards offer super-resolution tech, frame generation, and something called ‘Xe Low Latency.’
Super-resolution is Intel’s upscaling tech that will render games at lower resolutions and then use AI to make them appear sharper. I use Nvidia’s version of this when gaming on my TV to make my games run smoother at higher settings targets, but depending on the game, I find it a bit hit-and-miss in terms of visual quality. That said, these forms of upscaling do help GPUs last longer since you can play newer games on older cards, with upscaling helping to smooth out the lower resolution on modern displays. I also find this works better on the TV since I sit further away, so I notice less detail naturally. Intel says XeSS Super Resolution is supported on 150 games, with more to come.
The XeSS AI-powered frame generation tech adds fake AI-generated frames between real frames to make playing a game with a lower frame rate seem smoother. Nvidia released similar tech in 2022 with its 40-series of GPUs, so it’s nice to see Intel catch up. That said, we’ll need to wait for more tests to come out to see if both software are actually comparable.
The final XeSS tech just helps increase the game’s response time to your inputs. When all three are enabled, Intel says that they can improve performance by roughly 3.9 percent in AAA titles. Overall, Intel says the new cards offer 70 percent better performance per core compared to the Intel A-series cards and 50 percent more performance per watt of energy used.
Without testing either card, I’d still recommend that most users opt for the B580 since it comes with slightly more GPU cores and 12GB of VRAM. While it’s not a huge upgrade over the B570, which has 10GB of VRAM, the extra 2GB should help the card last a little longer if you plan to play graphically intensive games that support advanced features like ray tracing. Beyond that, the price difference is fairly small between them, so spending the extra cash to get the beefier GPU is likely worth the added cost.
The B580 will hit store shelves on December 13 and start at $249 USD (roughly, $350 CAD). The B570 comes out January 16 and starts at $219 USD (roughly, $308 CAD). Compared to other GPUs in Canada at this price point the Arc models are looking pretty slick since they include more VRAM on average than the competition, but only time will tell if they actually out perform options from Nvidia and AMD.
Source: Intel
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