Review Intel Arc A580 Review: New Budget Contender

[Admin]

The Intel Arc A580 finally arrives, with a $179 price tag. Performance isn't too far behind the A750, making this a potentially interesting budget GPU option, though efficiency isn't particularly good.

Intel Arc A580 Review: New Budget Contender : Read more

 

[AgentBirdnest]

Awesome review, as always!
Dang, was really hoping this would be more like $150-160. I bet the price will drop before long, though; I can't imagine many people choosing this over the A750 that is so closely priced. Still, it just feels good to see a card that can actually play modern AAA games for under $200.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Awesome review, as always!
Dang, was really hoping this would be more like $150-160. I bet the price will drop before long, though; I can't imagine many people choosing this over the A750 that is so closely priced. Still, it just feels good to see a card that can actually play modern AAA games for under $200.

Yeah, the $180 MSRP just feels like wishful thinking right now rather than reality. I don't know what supply of Arc GPUs looks like from the manufacturing side, and I feel like Intel may already be losing money per chip. But losing a few dollars rather than losing $50 or whatever is probably a win. This would feel a ton better at $150 or even $160, and maybe add half a star to the review.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Intel does have some cash to burn and if they are selling these cards at a loss, it'd at least put weight that they're serious about staying in the discrete GPU business.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Intel does have some cash to burn and if they are selling these cards at a loss, it'd at least put weight that they're serious about staying in the discrete GPU business.

That's the assumption I'm going off: Intel is willing to take a short-term / medium-term loss on GPUs in order to bootstrap its data center and overall ambitions. The consumer graphics market is just a side benefit that helps to defray the cost of driver development and all the other stuff that needs to happen.

But when you see the number of people who have left Intel Graphics in the past year, and the way Gelsinger keeps divesting of non-profitable businesses, I can't help but wonder how much longer he'll be willing to let the Arc experiment continue. I hope we can at least get to Celestial and Druid before any final decision is made, but that will probably depend on how Battlemage does.

Intel's GPU has a lot of room to improve, not just on drivers but on power and performance. Basically, look at Ada Lovelace and that's the bare minimum we need from Battlemage if it's really going to be competitive. We already have RDNA 3 as the less efficient, not quite as fast, etc. alternative to Intel, and AMD still has better drivers. Matching AMD isn't the end goal; Intel needs to take on Nvidia, at least up to the 4070 Ti level.

 

[mwm2010]

If the price of this goes down, then I would be very impressed. But because of the $180 price, it isn't quite at its full potential. You're probably better off with a 6600.

 

[btmedic04]

Arc just feels like one of the industries greatest "what ifs' to me. Had these launched during the great gpu shortage of 2021, Intel would have sold as many as they could produce. Hopefully Intel sticks with it, as consumers desperately need a third vendor in the market.

 

[cyrusfox]

I can't help but wonder how much longer he'll be willing to let the Arc experiment continue. I hope we can at least get to Celestial and Druid before any final decision is made, but that will probably depend on how Battlemage does.

What other choice do they have? If they canned their dGPU efforts, they still need staff to support for iGPU, or are they going to give up on that and license GPU tech? Also what would they do with their datacenter GPU(Ponte Vechio subsequent product).

Only clear path forward is to continue and I hope they do bet on themselves and take these licks (financial loss + negative driver feedback) and keep pushing forward. But you are right Pat has killed a lot of items and spun off some great businesses from Intel. I hope battlemage fixes a lot of the big issues and also hope we see 3rd and 4th gen Arc play out.

 

[bit_user]

Thanks @JarredWaltonGPU for another comprehensive GPU review!

I was rather surprised not to see you reference its relatively strong Raytracing, AI, and GPU Compute performance, in either the intro or the conclusion. For me, those are definitely highlights of Alchemist, just as much as AV1 support.

Looking at that gigantic table, on the first page, I can't help but wonder if you can ask the appropriate party for a "zoom" feature to be added for tables, similar to the way we can expand embedded images. It helps if I make my window too narrow for the sidebar - then, at least the table will grow to the full width of the window, but it's still not wide enough to avoid having the horizontal scroll bar.

Whatever you do, don't skimp on the detail! I love it!

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Thanks @JarredWaltonGPU for another comprehensive GPU review!

I was rather surprised not to see you reference its relatively strong Raytracing, AI, and GPU Compute performance, in either the intro or the conclusion. For me, those are definitely highlights of Alchemist, just as much as AV1 support.

Looking at that gigantic table, on the first page, I can't help but wonder if you can ask the appropriate party for a "zoom" feature to be added for tables, similar to the way we can expand embedded images. It helps if I make my window too narrow for the sidebar - then, at least the table will grow to the full width of the window, but it's still not wide enough to avoid having the horizontal scroll bar.

Whatever you do, don't skimp on the detail! I love it!

The evil CMS overlords won't let us have nice tables. That's basically the way things shake out. It hurts my heart every time I try to put in a bunch of GPUs, because I know I want to see all the specs, and I figure others do as well. Sigh.

As for RT and AI, it's decent for sure, though I guess I just got sidetracked looking at the A750. I can't help but wonder how things could have gone differently for Intel Arc, but then the drivers still have lingering concerns. (I didn't get into it as much here, but in testing a few extra games, I noticed some were definitely underperforming on Arc.)