Intel announces its new generation of Arc B graphics cards, which aim directly at the RTX 4060 and 1440p gaming

Intel has continued its range of Arc graphics cards with the launch of a second generation succinctly named Arc B. Although they start from the same technical base as the latest integrated GPUs for Lunar Lake portable processors, their hardware is considerably more complex and powerful, improving the performance of the first generation by about 25%.

Positioned as direct rivals to the RTX 4060 and designed for gaming at 1440p (or a very comfortable 1080p), the new Intel Arc B570 and B580 are derived from the Xe2 Battlemage architecture, which incorporates important improvements in memory management, capacity AI processing for local tasks and ray tracing. The most powerful model has a TDP of 190 W.

Equipped with 10 or 12 GB of VRAM depending on the model, Arc B cards stand out for their high bandwidth, which reaches 456 GB/s. This should imply a relatively important improvement compared to those games where an RTX 4060 is limited by its memory; Titles that barely reach 60 FPS with the Nvidia card should break this barrier.

Additionally, the new hardware benefits from improvements in XeSS intelligent scaling. Among the changes received include frame generation, which interpolates images to improve the fluidity of the game, but without suffering a penalty in the form of latency thanks to the use of Xe Low Latency, a technology that “integrates with the game engine” (we can infer that each developer will be in charge of implementing it) to, in theory, multiply the FPS rate by 3.9x. We will have to be very attentive to the real performance and final quality that these techniques provide.

Intel wants to position its new Arc B cards as a more economical, efficient option with a better performance-price ratio than its Nvidia counterparts. Its prices for the United States will be $219 for the Arc B570 and $249 for the more powerful Arc B580.

Apart from the models marketed by Intel itself, we will also find models marketed by brands such as Acer, ASRock or Gunnir, although at first it seems that they will use the reference design.