Almost all indicators show that Intel aims to announce at least one Battlemage desktop GPU next month—the Arc B580—to compete against the best graphics cards. As spotted by momomo_us, Intel is seemingly cooking up an Arc B580 Limited Edition GPU for $250 based on preliminary listings. It is important to note that this $250 price tag might not reflect the B580's MSRP for AIB models at launch.
The Arc B580, seen across shipping manifests, official retailer listings, and even benchmarks, is rumored to carry 20 Xe Cores or 2,560 ALUs, 12GB of GDDR6 VRAM across a 192-bit memory interface, and a boost clock of 2.85 GHz - netting it 14.6 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. Team Blue is set to launch this GPU before the end of the year in December, though we cannot confirm if other variants are also planned. Limited Edition GPUs are based on Intel's reference cooler and are produced in limited quantities. As seen with the Arc A770 Limited Edition, these variants can be discontinued relatively quickly.
The listed prices range from $246 to as high as $374, but we'll take the lower end of this range for reference. When compared against other offerings, the B580 is under attack from its predecessor - the A580 - coming in at 32% cheaper. Further up the Alchemist stack, the A770 can be had for $280 or even less with discounts and has more VRAM. Current generation GPUs from AMD and Nvidia are still a tad more expensive - providing some much-needed relief to the B580. However, we are not considering the next-gen Blackwell and RDNA 4 lineups - of which the latter will likely give Intel serious competition in the budget segment.
One positive aspect of this leak is that sub $300 GPUs will finally come equipped with 12GB of VRAM - which may push Nvidia and AMD to follow suit. Modern games struggle with 8GB of memory, even at 1080p, if you crank everything to the max. The extra headroom makes these GPUs future-proof and a viable candidate for 1440p gaming.
Intel's ability to gain market share hinges on competitive pricing. Battlemage's market reception depends on how AMD prices its Radeon RX 8000 GPUs and how well they perform. The initial Battlemage announcement could be limited to the B580 as we speculate the B770 and other GPUs might be slated for a 2025 launch.
