Wellllllllll those rumors of an impending launch for Intel’s next-gen Arc “Battlemage” graphics cards in December are looking a lot more concrete now. We discussed the whispers on this week’s episode of our Full Nerd podcast, but now, a listing for an Intel B580 desktop graphics card just popped up on Amazon on Friday night.
Awkward.
Videocardz spotted the listing for the ASRock Intel ARC B580 Steel Legend 12GB OC before anyone else. Beyond the confirmation of the product existing, perhaps the most interesting part of this oopsie-daisy leak is right in the name: The Arc B580 packs 12GB of GDDR6 memory clocked at 19Gbps. That means Intel is sidestepping the “Is 8GB of VRAM enough?!?!?!” controversy that enveloped last generation’s GeForce RTX 4060 and 4060 Ti, as well as AMD’s Radeon RX 7600. The Battlemage card’s 192-bit memory bus also overpowers the minuscule 128-bit bus in the RTX 4060 cards, providing hope that Intel’s GPU could possibly be used for both 1080p and 1440p gaming – unlike these Nvidia options, which are focused on 1080p gaming alone.
While Nvidia’s RTX series has moved exclusively to the new 12VHPWR power connectors, the ASRock Arc B580 Steel Legend only requires a pair of traditional 8-pin connectors. Each of those can deliver up to 150W, while motherboard PCIe slots provide up to another 75W, given the B580 a maximum potential power draw of 375W.
That, in combination with the 192-bit bus, suggests the Arc B580 could deliver performance in the ballpark of Nvidia’s similarly equipped RTX 4070 – something early leaks have also suggested.
The IO panel for the card reveals a trio of DisplayPorts and a singular HDMI connector. The ASRock Steel Legend features a clean white look and a backplate with a flow-through design similar to what’s become common in many modern GPUs.
Here’s ASRock’s also pretty darned awkwarddescription for the Arc B580 Steel Legend:
“B-series pixel pushers, more excitingly known as Battlemage, will be the best graphics cards Intel has ever made. Following the chaos of Alchemist, the company has practically resigned its graphics architecture from the ground up. Providing there are no unexpected instabilities lurking in the Xe2 architecture, they should make for much more compelling competition to GeForce and Radeon. That’s across the desktop and mobile space.”
Yeah, ASRock, hopefully there are no unexpected instabilities lurking in the Xe2 architecture!
Speaking of, while this is a tantalizing glimpse that confirms Intel’s next-gen Arc GPUs should seemingly be right around the corner, it doesn’t provide any real information about expected performance. The Xe2 architecture powering Battlemage first appeared in Intel’s Lunar Lake laptop CPUs and provided a solid leap forward in frame rates versus their mobile first-gen Arc counterparts.
I’m very curious to see not only Battlemage’s real world performance, but also its price – the first-gen Arc A580 launched at a mere $179 in late 2023. A price anywhere near that low would be a pleasant holiday surprise indeed if the B580 manages to deliver frames at a pace on par (or better) than Nvidia’s $300 RTX 4060 – and it would send a hell of a message to AMD while Radeon’s next-gen offerings focus on mainstream price points.
I’d expect to hear a lot more information from Intel sooner than later if this is already appearing on Amazon’s U.S. storefront. You can see our earlier Full Nerd discussing about Battlemage rumors starting at the 37:30 mark in the video below.