Tom's Hardware Verdict
Intel's Arc A580 feels like a card from a previous generation, though at least it comes priced to move. But it's not much cheaper, or much slower, than the existing Arc A750, depending on street prices.
Pros
- +
Competitive pricing
- +
Good 1080p performance
- +
256-bit memory interface
- +
AV1, XeSS, and more
Cons
- -
Uses quite a bit of power
- -
Noisy fans on the Sparkle card
- -
8GB of memory (not a huge issue for sub-$200)
- -
Driver concerns still linger
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The Intel Arc A580 is finally here. First announced in 2022, we initially expected to see the card go on sale in early 2023. But then the months ticked by, pricing on the Arc A750 dropped, and we wondered if the final Intel Arc Alchemist desktop offering had simply been canned. Wonder no longer! It's here, and it still has some tricks that can help it compete against the best graphics cards.
Our sample for this review comes via Sparkle. There will also be Arc A580 cards from ASRock and Gunnir (the latter being limited to Asian markets). Maybe a few other graphics card manufacturers will start selling the A580 in the future, but Intel won't be making its own brand "Limited Edition" card — and it has discontinued the A770 LE and A750 LE.
Functionally, the Arc A580 looks very much like the A750 and A770 8GB. The key difference is that four additional Xe-Cores have been disabled, along with the accompanying shaders and XMX units. But it still has the full 256-bit memory interface, with the same 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM as the earlier Arc offerings. We can't help but wonder what a 12GB, 192-bit interface Arc might have looked like in terms of performance, but that's not to be, at least not on desktop.
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Graphics Card | Arc A580 | Arc A750 | Arc A770 8GB | Arc A770 16GB | RTX 4060 | RTX 3050 | RTX 3060 | RX 7600 | RX 6600 | RX 6700 10GB |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Architecture | ACM-G10 | ACM-G10 | ACM-G10 | ACM-G10 | AD107 | GA106 | Navi 33 | Navi 23 | Navi 22 | Navi 22 |
Process Technology | TSMC N6 | TSMC N6 | TSMC N6 | TSMC N6 | TSMC 4N | Samsung 8N | Samsung 8N | TSMC N6 | TSMC N7 | TSMC N7 |
Transistors (Billion) | 21.7 | 21.7 | 21.7 | 21.7 | 18.9 | 12 | 12 | 13.3 | 11.1 | 17.2 |
Die size (mm^2) | 406 | 406 | 406 | 406 | 158.7 | 276 | 276 | 204 | 237 | 336 |
SMs / CUs / Xe-Cores | 24 | 28 | 32 | 32 | 24 | 20 | 28 | 32 | 28 | 36 |
GPU Cores (Shaders) | 3072 | 3584 | 4096 | 4096 | 3072 | 2560 | 3584 | 2048 | 1792 | 2304 |
Tensor / AI Cores | 384 | 448 | 512 | 512 | 96 | 80 | 112 | 64 | N/A | N/A |
Ray Tracing "Cores" | 24 | 28 | 32 | 32 | 24 | 20 | 28 | 32 | 28 | 36 |
Boost Clock (MHz) | 2400 | 2400 | 2400 | 2400 | 2460 | 1777 | 1777 | 2625 | 2491 | 2450 |
VRAM Speed (Gbps) | 16 | 16 | 16 | 17.5 | 17 | 14 | 15 | 18 | 14 | 16 |
VRAM (GB) | 8 | 8 | 8 | 16 | 8 | 8 | 12 | 8 | 8 | 10 |
VRAM Bus Width | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 | 128 | 128 | 192 | 128 | 128 | 160 |
L2 / Infinity Cache | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 24 | 2 | 3 | 32 | 32 | 80 |
ROPs | 128 | 128 | 128 | 128 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 64 | 64 | 64 |
TMUs | 192 | 224 | 256 | 256 | 96 | 80 | 112 | 128 | 112 | 144 |
TFLOPS FP32 (Boost) | 14.7 | 17.2 | 19.7 | 19.7 | 15.1 | 9.1 | 12.7 | 21.5 | 8.9 | 11.3 |
TFLOPS FP16 (FP8) | 118 | 138 | 157 | 157 | 121 (242) | 36 (73) | 51 (102) | 43 | 17.8 | 22.6 |
Bandwidth (GBps) | 512 | 512 | 512 | 560 | 272 | 224 | 360 | 288 | 224 | 320 |
TDP (watts) | 185 | 225 | 225 | 225 | 115 | 130 | 170 | 165 | 132 | 175 |
Launch Date | Oct 2023 | Sep 2022 | Sep 2022 | Sep 2022 | Jul 2023 | Jan 2022 | Feb 2021 | May 2023 | Oct 2021 | Mar 2021 |
Launch Price | $179 | $289 | $329 | $349 | $299 | $249 | $329 | $269 | $329 | $479 |
Online Price | $180 | $190 | $240 | $280 | $290 | $216 | $250 | $240 | $200 | $281 |
In theory, the Arc A750 has a $249 MSRP — it was reduced not too long after launch to make it more attractive. The problem that the A580 faces is that current street prices on the A750 are as low as $190, just $10 more than the launch price of the A580. For example, there's a Sparkle Arc A750 for $189.99 on Amazon, or if you prefer, there's an ASRock Arc A750 for $199.99 on Amazon. Either way, you're getting 17% more shaders and compute for just 6–11 percent more money.
We've seen the A750 at $200 or less for a couple of months now, so these prices shouldn't be a surprise to Intel or its partners. Assuming supply holds, we'd expect street prices on the A580 to drop another $20–$30 to compensate. Because prices really need to fall to make this a better deal than the A750.
It's not just Arc A750 that the A580 needs to beat, however. Nvidia's cheapest RTX cards are the RTX 3050 and RTX 3060, priced at $216 and $250, respectively. The A580 should easily beat the 3050, at least on performance (not on power), but the 3060 offers entry into the Nvidia ecosystem and better overall performance. There's also the newer RTX 4060, starting at $290, which also warrants a look. Nvidia costs more, in other words, but some will feel it's worth the cost.
From AMD, the closest competitor is the RX 6600 (non-XT) which has been on sale for as little as $180 in recent months. Currently, the best price we can find is $200, so Intel wins again on pricing... but what about performance? And drivers? And power use? Those are all important factors, which we'll cover in a moment.
Again, the biggest hurdle that the A580 faces right now is going to be the A750. Until or unless prices change, there's almost no reason to save $10 to get the A580. If you're willing to take a chance on Intel Arc — the drivers still aren't quite as reliable as AMD and Nvidia drivers, though they continue to improve — why not opt for higher performance?
There aren't many other benefits besides the additional compute, however. Both the A580 and A750 offer 8GB of GDDR6 16Gbps memory on a 256-bit interface. Both have the same video outputs, AV1 encoding/decoding support, etc. On paper, the A580 has a slightly lower 185W TBP (total board power), but the Sparkle card at least comes with two 8-pin connectors. It certainly doesn't need them, as peak power use throughout our test suite was under 210W, but the Orc OC does exceed the base power.
Clock speeds are also an interesting point of discussion. Intel officially lists a Game Clock of just 1.7 GHz on the A580, compared to 2050 MHz on the A750. But the maximum boost clock of the A750 and A770 appears to be 2.4 GHz. What about the boost clock on the A580? Well, Intel doesn't officially give that information, but on the Sparkle Orc OC, we consistently saw clocks of 2300–2400 MHz. That means it ends up a lot closer to the A750 than the paper specs might otherwise indicate. (This is why we list the boost clock rather than the game clocks for the AMD and Intel GPUs.)
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Jarred Walton
Jarred Walton is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on everything GPU. He has been working as a tech journalist since 2004, writing for AnandTech, Maximum PC, and PC Gamer. From the first S3 Virge '3D decelerators' to today's GPUs, Jarred keeps up with all the latest graphics trends and is the one to ask about game performance.
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9 CommentsComment from the forums
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.Reply
JarredWaltonGPU AgentBirdnest said:
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.
Reply
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.
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JarredWaltonGPU hotaru.hino said:
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.
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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.
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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.
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cyrusfox JarredWaltonGPU said:
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.
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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!
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JarredWaltonGPU bit_user said:
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.)
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