Test Setup
For the Intel Arc B580 Limited Edition video card, we are using driver version 32.0.101.6793 dated 5/9/2025; this was the latest driver at the time of review. There is a slightly new driver at the time of publishing, 6795, but it includes support for a few games we aren’t using in this review, so it isn’t relevant for this review’s suite of game testing, and will have no effect on the performance of the games we are using. The 6793 driver does include support for Doom: The Dark Ages, which we are using, so that game is supported with the tested driver, and the driver a few versions back, 6737, included support for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which is also being used in this review. Therefore, all games we are using are supported by this latest 6793 driver we are using today, and it did come out this month.
We are using an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU for benchmarking, to provide a ‘best case scenario’ for all GPUs, to truly test their maximum potential. We are aware of the Intel CPU driver overhead situation on Intel Arc with slower CPUs, but we are not testing that scenario today; we are focused on showing the maximum potential of each GPU so we can align their performances and compare with that goal in mind when equipped in a best-configuration system.
Also note that the ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4060 OC Edition is a factory overclocked video card, which runs above the reference GPU Boost for an RTX 4060. The ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4060 OC Edition has a GPU Boost set at 2505MHz compared to the NVIDIA default of 2460MHz. The SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 7600 XT is also a factory overclocked video card, it has a game clock of 2539MHz and a boost clock of up to 2810MHz. This places its factory overclock at 3% over the reference spec game clock and 2% over the reference spec boost clock.
Discussion (8 replies)
Join Discussion →Man at that price point Intel has a real gem.
Imagine if you could double those up ... say in SLI or whatever ... for 4k gaming .... even at twice the price for the bump in performance you could provide better value than team green. And not much sacrifice on PCIe lanes because they're only x8 to begin with.
You mean like their new high end AI cards are designed to do. Dual B590's with 24 gig on one card for 48 gig with software that will support up to 4 of those cards if you have the lanes... for 8 GPU's. For 192gb of vram for your hungry LLM's.
I'd rather they develop their graphics cards to work toward scaling graphic resolution rather than compute. They can develop their processors to scale compute. Just because team green does it, doesn't mean everyone else (or anyone else, for that matter) should. Nip this silly nonsense in the bud.
Yea... but I don't think many of us want to buy a 360+ core CPU with what we would expect from a CPU. The great thing about GPU's is they are effectively small path limited programmable Cores. And you can pack a EFF TON of those into a GPU die. That's why CUDA is so amazing. But you wouldn't want to use it as a CPU.
Now you see companies coming out with RISC CPU's getting closer to parity with GPU's but we are still a long way off of that being programmatically useful for general purpose.
Guys and gals, this review put a real smile on my face. It is great to see this from Intel, and I hope to see more improvements in the next 24 months. We still need better Linux support and more consistent performance across games, but this card is currently a real option at that price.
Sadly modern graphics engines really don't work with SLI. They rely heavily on temporal upsampling, reusing data from the last frame to improve the current frame, and that makes it basically impossible to do interleaved rendering like the old Crossfire setups.
With such good best case results, I'd love to see a revisit with a 5600 or 12400 series CPU. 5800X or 12600K would be fun. Anything in that range. 10th or 11th gen would be really interesting too. Since games like Spidey and Miles Morales with high or maxed crowds, traffic, and RT reflections can really expose the overhead issues on Battlemage.
My 5600X3D could not fully utilize my Onix Odyssey B580 at times under those conditions. Swinging fast on crowded streets like Broadway being the worst case scenario. It drives the struggle bus on B450+3700X in those titles. It's playable until you try to use RT, then things get ugly. Which is a bummer because the card can handle it with enough CPU to drive it.
Overall though, it's a great card and a hell of lot of progress made from where my 750LE was at when I bought it.