Intel’s recent Big Battlemage GPU launch has now been tested in a handful of games, where it is essentially trading blows with NVIDIA’s mid-tier offering. Now, while Intel’s drivers do enable the Arc Pro B70 to play games, it should first be understood that the card, with a BMG-31 GPU paired with 32 GB of GDDR6 memory, was purposely designed for productivity and AI workloads, not gaming. However, since Intel has, at least for now, abandoned the consumer market, folks are eager to see how the workstation card performs in games in the absence of any new consumer-grade GPUs.
Despite being launched in March, the availability of Intel’s latest dGPU remains scarce, but one site has managed to test a partner card, namely the GUNNIR Intel Arc Pro B70 TF 32G. This card features a blower-style design similar to the Intel reference design and so would be unlikely to hit higher clock speeds normally seen with the two or three-fan designs commonly used in gaming cards.
- Model: GUNNIR Intel Arc Pro B70 TF 32G
- GPU: BMG-G31
- Manufacturing process: TSMC N5
- Xe-core count: 32
- Core frequency: 2600MHz
- Video memory type: GDDR6
- Video memory capacity: 32GB
- Memory bus width: 256-bit
- Video memory speed: 19Gbps
- PCIe interface: PCIe 5.0 x16
- Video interface: DisplayPort 2.1 x3, HDMI 2.1 x1
- Power interface: 8-pin x2
- TBP: 290W
- Size: 267 x 111.1 x 37.3mm
Synthetic testing per Expreview (via VideoCardz) shows the GUNNIR Intel Arc Pro B70 TF 32G outperforming the Arc B580 by 45.8% in 3DMark, with similar gains in Steel Nomad ranging from 36.4% to 51.7%. When compared to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti featuring 16 GB GDDR7 memory on a 128-bit bus, 4,608 CUDA Cores running at ~2,572 MHz, things take a very different turn. On average gains narrow to around 2.9% with some ranging between 1% and 6.8%.
Ultimately, while this is purely synthetic testing of a benchmark used by PC enthusiasts for gaming focus, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that this $950 GPU made for AI workloads is trading blows with one that has a $430 MSRP, although good luck finding one at MSRP.