Wellllllllll these rumors of an impending launch for Intel’s next-gen Arc “Battlemage” graphics playing cards in December are wanting much more concrete now. We mentioned the whispers on this week’s episode of our Full Nerd podcast, however now, an inventory for an Intel B580 desktop graphics card simply popped up on Amazon on Friday evening.
Awkward.
Videocardz noticed the itemizing for the ASRock Intel ARC B580 Metal Legend 12GB OC earlier than anybody else. Past the affirmation of the product present, maybe essentially the most fascinating a part of this oopsie-daisy leak is correct within the title: The Arc B580 packs 12GB of GDDR6 reminiscence clocked at 19Gbps. Which means Intel is sidestepping the “Is 8GB of VRAM enough?!?!?!” controversy that enveloped final era’s GeForce RTX 4060 and 4060 Ti, in addition to AMD’s Radeon RX 7600. The Battlemage card’s 192-bit reminiscence bus additionally overpowers the minuscule 128-bit bus within the RTX 4060 playing cards, offering hope that Intel’s GPU might presumably be used for each 1080p and 1440p gaming – not like these Nvidia choices, that are targeted on 1080p gaming alone.
Whereas Nvidia’s RTX collection has moved solely to the brand new 12VHPWR energy connectors, the ASRock Arc B580 Metal Legend solely requires a pair of conventional 8-pin connectors. Every of these can ship as much as 150W, whereas motherboard PCIe slots present as much as one other 75W, given the B580 a most potential energy draw of 375W.
The IO panel for the cardboard reveals a trio of DisplayPorts and a singular HDMI connector. The ASRock Metal Legend incorporates a clear white look and a backplate with a flow-through design much like what’s develop into widespread in lots of trendy GPUs.
Right here’s ASRock’s additionally fairly darned awkward description for the Arc B580 Metal Legend, which is so blunt it kinda makes me marvel if this may very well be some type of hoax itemizing regardless of it being from ASRock on Amazon:
“B-series pixel pushers, more excitingly known as Battlemage, will be the best graphics cards Intel has ever made. Following the chaos of Alchemist, the company has practically resigned its graphics architecture from the ground up. Providing there are no unexpected instabilities lurking in the Xe2 architecture, they should make for much more compelling competition to GeForce and Radeon. That’s across the desktop and mobile space.”
Yeah, ASRock, hopefully there aren’t any sudden instabilities lurking within the Xe2 structure after the chaos of Alchemist!
Talking of, whereas it is a tantalizing glimpse that confirms Intel’s next-gen Arc GPUs ought to seemingly be proper across the nook, it doesn’t present any actual details about anticipated efficiency. The Xe2 structure powering Battlemage first appeared in Intel’s Lunar Lake laptop computer CPUs and supplied a strong leap ahead in body charges versus their cell first-gen Arc counterparts.
I’m very curious to see not solely Battlemage’s actual world efficiency, but in addition its value – the first-gen Arc A580 launched at a mere $179 in late 2023. A value wherever close to that low could be a nice vacation shock certainly if the B580 manages to ship frames at a tempo on par (or higher) than Nvidia’s $300 RTX 4060. It might additionally ship a hell of a message to AMD whereas Radeon’s next-gen choices give attention to mainstream value factors.
I’d anticipate to listen to much more info from Intel ahead of later if that is already showing on Amazon’s U.S. storefront. You’ll be able to see our earlier Full Nerd dialogue about Battlemage rumors beginning on the 37:30 mark within the video under.
