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Intel's Arc A580 was fast becoming a GPU that we never expected would see the light of day. I remember asking Intel six months ago if the Arc A580 was still a thing. I got a noncommittal answer, probably because even Intel wasn't entirely sure when or if the A580 would get released. Even now that it's here, we sort of have to wonder if it was worth the trouble. It's not that the card is bad, per se, but the Arc A750 right now only costs $10 more.
Intel very likely had some ACM-G10 chips that couldn't meet the requirements to become an A750 or A770, and they probably couldn't meet the power requirements for mobile Arc either. Rather than ditch the chips, Intel has stored them up until it was ready to release the A580. In the meantime, GPU prices have dropped quite a bit, and what once might have seemed like a great deal at $200 or so now feels too much even at $180.
We'll have to see where street prices eventually land, but as long as cards like the Sparkle Arc A750 exist and sell for $190, the only place the A580 can hope to succeed is if it goes even lower, like $170 or less. There's a reason the Arc A750 sits on our list of the best graphics cards right now, and it's all about bang for the buck.
The closest GPU right now, price-wise, is the RX 6600. We've seen that go on sale for $180 as well, though right now it costs $200. The Arc A580 is generally the faster card, sometimes by a lot, though the RX 6600 still does fine in rasterization games. The thing is, the RX 6600 also only consumes about 135W of power, which is substantially less than the Arc A580. If you're worried about electricity use, we'd go for the RX 6600 or even Nvidia's RTX 4060 — the latter costs $100 more, but also only uses less than 120W.
| Graphics Card | 1080p FPS | 1440p FPS | 4K FPS | Price (MSRP) | Value - FPS/$ | Power | Efficiency — FPS/W |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Arc A750 | 66.4 | 38.7 | — | $190 ($250) | 1 — 0.292 | 199W | 9 — 0.279 |
| Intel Arc A580 | 60.6 | 34.6 | — | $180 ($180) | 2 — 0.279 | 194W | 10 — 0.259 |
| GeForce RTX 4060 | 82.6 | 44.3 | 22.0 | $290 ($300) | 3 — 0.232 | 127W | 1 — 0.531 |
| Radeon RX 6650 XT | 65.8 | 33.8 | — | $230 ($400) | 4 — 0.229 | 171W | 7 — 0.308 |
| Radeon RX 7600 | 68.6 | 34.3 | — | $240 ($270) | 5 — 0.227 | 153W | 2 — 0.357 |
| GeForce RTX 3060 | 67.0 | 37.2 | 20.0 | $250 ($330) | 6 — 0.220 | 160W | 3 — 0.344 |
| Intel Arc A770 16GB | 71.6 | 43.5 | — | $280 ($350) | 7 — 0.217 | 210W | 8 — 0.289 |
| Radeon RX 6600 | 53.6 | 26.8 | — | $200 ($330) | 8 — 0.213 | 135W | 6 — 0.316 |
| Radeon RX 6700 10GB | 71.5 | 38.4 | — | $281 ($430) | 9 — 0.207 | 184W | 5 — 0.317 |
| GeForce RTX 3050 | 48.8 | 26.3 | — | $216 ($250) | 10 — 0.184 | 123W | 4 — 0.323 |
Sparkle's Arc graphics cards don't blaze new trails as far as features and style go, but the A580 Orc OC worked well enough in our testing, at least as far as performance goes. The fan curve and perhaps firmware need to be tweaked to keep a steadier fan speed, but at least the card ran reasonably cool. If the price falls another $20 or more, or if the price of the Arc A750 goes up $20 or more, the A580 could be a good entry-level option for an Arc GPU that still has enough muscle to play modern games — something that we can't say about the Arc A380.
Intel still has plenty of work to do before it can truly compete against AMD and Nvidia. The drivers are mostly fine, though you're still likely to encounter more odd behavior than you would with Nvidia or AMD cards. More importantly, Intel needs to get out its second iteration of Arc, which we expect will land some time in 2024. Will it arrive sooner than later? Intel isn't saying anything yet.
The current Arc Alchemist GPUs are still merely the first step. They're paving the way for future architectures, assuming Intel wants to keep trying its hand at dedicated graphics cards. Alchemist feels like it arrived far too late to really compete, and it's hard to imagine Intel or its partners are making much if anything off Arc sales.
Battlemage could make or break the dedicated GPU hopes and dreams of Intel, and hopefully it will prove a more formidable opponent rather than being a value alternative with occasional hiccups. Take everything Intel and its partners have learned with Arc over the past year or more, then come out with a refined architecture that fixes the shortcomings, offers better efficiency, and at least doubles the A770 performance. That would provide some real excitement from Team Blue's GPU division.
As it stands, the Arc A580 only makes sense if the retail landscape changes enough for it to find a niche. It's not bad, but it's far too close to the A750 to justify its existence right now — a lot like the situation with AMD's RX 7700 XT relative to the RX 7800 XT.
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