Intel Arc B580 - Review
I’ve never been much of a PC gamer, but in recent years I’ve started to dive deeper into the platform. Going from 0 to 100 was not really an option – both financially and mentally – so when I built my PC in 2019, I aimed for the mid-range. A decent Ryzen CPU for the time, a pretty good amount of RAM, and an Nvidia RTX 2070. I knew I wasn’t going to get the best performance, but I was only aiming for medium settings at 1080p, so I figured it would get the job done. Fast forwarding to 2025, that RTX 2070 was very much starting to show its age, even at 1080p, so when Intel offered up its new mid-range Arc B580 GPU for review, I thought it would be a great opportunity to check out what the mid-range of PC hardware is looking like today.
I also took the opportunity to make a few key upgrades to my system. I upgraded my monitors to 1440p, and bumped up my CPU to a Ryzen 5600, alongside a RAM upgrade to 64GB — probably a bit of overkill on the RAM, but I wanted to future proof at least a little bit. With my system very firmly in the modern mid-range, I was ready to slot the B580 into the PC… and I was immediately impressed with the results.
Intel’s limited edition reference model of the B580 is an absolutely gorgeous piece of kit, with a fantastic minimalist design that feels right at home in my more subdued PC design. I’m not one for big glass windows and blinding RGB lighting, so something smooth, svelte, and stylish that also isn’t showing off with gaudy Gamer aesthetics was absolutely perfect.
Another immediate discovery was just how quiet the new card is. My old 2070 was usually fairly quiet at idle, but when playing just about any game – no matter how taxing it was – its fans roared to life and were audible even when wearing headphones. The B580 was so quiet in comparison that I was actually worried I had it misconfigured at first. I was getting better performance, but I could barely hear it, and that made me worry that maybe there were fan profiles that weren’t being engaged or that maybe the fans weren’t working at all. A quick look inside my PC case revealed that the fans were working just fine, and monitoring the temperatures revealed that it was running very cool — it’s just incredibly quiet, which is exactly what you want with a card like this.
With the card installed – and confirmed to be working – I went about testing a wide range of games, both big and small, new and old. I’d always heard that Intel cards were a bit iffy with older games, so I was particularly interested in how those were going to perform. On the older side of things, results were mixed at first.
Final Fantasy 15, for example, saw a massive increase in frame rates and stability. It already ran fairly well on my 2070, in part no doubt due to the specific optimisations made for Nvidia cards, but there were occasional stutters, and it was difficult at higher settings to keep at a solid 60fps. With the Intel Arc B580, frame rates were at least 50% higher and locking it to a 60fps cap showed a smooth, consistent frame rate with absolutely zero drops, even with the settings maxed out.
Deus Ex Mankind Divided fared worse, though. I don’t know specifically what was causing the disparity, but running on my 2070, frame rates ranged from 60 into the high 80s, while on the B580 I was ranging more from 50 into the mid 70s. With a little bit of tweaking it was still possible to get it running at a consistent frame rate, but it was worrying to say the least.
That held up with a host of other older games I tested, with some seeing huge boosts to performance, others seeing slight drops, and some staying largely the same. It’s likely that many of the games I tested were optimised specifically for Nvidia cards, and the Intel card was brute forcing a lot of its way through poor optimisation, but I expected a straight upgrade from my 6-year-old card, and I just wasn’t seeing that across the board.
That is, until a few driver updates arrived for the Intel card, and suddenly almost every older game I tested was performing better than on the 2070, often by large amounts. It seems like earlier driver versions, while largely solid, still needed a little bit of work, and now that the work has been done there are few, if any, games where the B580 isn’t performing better. At both 1080p and 1440p just about every older game I test is running at a solid 60fps or higher, all with the settings maxed out. That certainly wasn’t the case on the 2070, so the Intel card is definitely hitting the marks I’d hoped for now. Very rarely I’ll stumble across a game that is just barely performing better than the old card, but it’s still better, even if it’s not by much.
Modern games showed a clearer upgrade right from the get-go. The 2070 struggled a lot with most modern games, largely due to its limited VRAM, but the B580 with its 12GB of VRAM is able to clear the older card with ease. Games like Avowed, Stalker 2, Life is Strange Double Exposure, Civilization 7, and Palworld were all now playable at high settings with a solid 60fps frame rate, which often required dipping into the medium or even low settings on the 2070.
Games with XeSS 2 upscaling support showed even better results, with games like F1 2024 even getting up to (an admittedly unstable) 120fps with XeSS enabled. XeSS 2 is pretty magical honestly, because there’s almost zero noticeable difference compared to running it at a higher native resolution. I’m sure ardent pixel peepers would notice a few artifacts here and there, but to my eye it was effectively like pressing a big magic button that said “make games look and run better,” and I was consistently impressed with the results. Even when set to the “Ultra Performance” setting with frame generation and low latency enabled, games look absolutely fantastic.
When I first installed the card, games that supported XeSS 2 were minimal, almost bordering on nonexistent. F1 24 was one such game, and Marvel Rivals, but I couldn’t find much else that supported it. The story is different now, though, with a host of new games like Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Civilization 7, Diablo 4, Delta Force, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, and Rise of the Ronin all supporting the new upscaling features. I’ve tested it in each of those games, and it was impressive in every single one of them — I had experience with Nvidia’s DLSS in the past on my 2070, but XeSS 2 was much more effective in almost every scenario. Maybe newer Nvidia cards can go toe to toe with it, but that comes at a pretty hefty cost.
And that’s where Intel’s Arc B580 shines the most: its price point. Now, obviously different manufacturers will offer B580 cards at different price points, but just about every Arc B580 card on the market is available for $500 or less. Even the cheapest 50 series Nvidia graphics card will set you back at least $200 more, and from benchmarks and testing I’ve seen from others, you’d be getting comparable performance — and less VRAM, which is becoming more and more of a problem.
There is simply no graphics card on the market that represents better value than the Intel Arc B580. It’s dead silent, extremely performant, cheap as chips, and when a game supports XeSS 2, it borders on magical. If you’re shopping for a new graphics card on a budget, there’s no better option than this, and if your old graphics card is starting to show its age, you should seriously consider Intel’s latest and greatest.
The Score
9.0
Review unit provided by Intel
The Pros
Probably the quietest graphics card on the market
Incredible value for money with the performance you get at 1080p and 1440p
XeSS 2 is absolutely magical — when it’s available
The Cons
XeSS 2 support is somewhat limited, but growing fast
Might still need some driver updates to make the most of older games
Limited driver support for VR headsets
