First Intel Arc B580 benchmark — loses to NVIDIA RTX 4060 and AMD RX 6700 XT, but outperforms A580 by 30%

The Intel Arc B580 graphics card was tested at Geekbench using the OpenCL and Vulkan APIs. It couldn’t keep up with the NVIDIA RTX 4060, but it shows significant progress compared to its predecessor.

The site VideoCardz reported on the test, which showed the Arc B580 outperforming the A580 by 30%, and apparently, it was conducted before the embargo lift on December 12. The test bench included Intel’s flagship Core Ultra 9 285K processor, 48 GB of fast DDR5-8400 memory, and a Gigabyte Z890 AORUS PRO ICE motherboard. Intel claims a 10% speed boost over the RTX 4060 at a lower cost of $250.

Many factors urge a skeptical view of its results: the lack of comparison in DirectX, in games, and possible driver imperfections. Based on the test results, the site Tom’s Hardware prepared a comparative table of graphics cards:

The two different APIs demonstrate performance differences across architectures. The Arc B580 is nearly 30% faster than the A580 in Vulkan and only 10% in OpenCL. The Intel graphics card loses to the RTX 4060 in OpenCL but makes up for it with a slight 6% advantage in Vulkan. The Radeon RX 7600 trails behind the B580 in both APIs, and the B580, in turn, lags behind the RX 6700 XT.

The test gives a rough idea of the performance of the graphics cards. Intel has chances in the budget market if it develops quality drivers and evens out performance in games. The new scaling and interpolation technology XeSS 2 might help, potentially outperforming the current generation AMD FSR.