Intel Arc A580 – It has been a little over a year since Intel decided to join the desktop GPU market directly competing with AMD and NVIDIA. The launch of the Intel Arc series; their first generation desktop GPU was a bit rocky at first and was expectedly so, but since then they have been improving them here and there to bring out the utmost capability of their lineups.
Up until last week, Intel has so far only released 4 variants of the Intel Arc series. Their entry-level, the A310 and A380 under the Arc 3 brand, then the A750 and A770 under the Arc 7 brand— leaving its budget mid-range tier empty until the release of Intel Arc A 580 being their first Arc 5 brand lineups.
Intel Arc A580 Specification
Intel Arc 580 is based on the same board (ACM-G10) as its powerful siblings, the 7 series albeit in its cut-down version. It packs with 3072 stream processors and is paired with 8 GB video memory with a 256-bit interface as well as 512 GB/s memory bandwidth.
The card itself sits just slightly under the A750 and the 8GB variant of the A770 and a bit way above the A380 performance-wise. It shows that the A580 Intel is meant to target budget gamers who may want to spend a little bit more for a better 1080p gaming experience.
Compared to its competitors, the card itself seems to be competing head to head with AMD’s RX 6600 and RTX 3050 from NVIDIA as shown in several Intel Arc A580 Benchmarks. Its main strong point lies in its higher compute performance (10.445 FP32 TFLOPS vs. Radeon RX 6600’s 9 FP32 TFLOPS and GeForce RTX 3050’s 8 FP32 TFLOPS) and the far higher memory bandwidth of 512GB/s.
Hardware Unboxed has already done a bit of testing on the card and it shows that on average, the A580 GPU result is sitting quite close with the RX 6600 both in 1080p and 1440p gaming scenarios. There are a few hiccups here and there due to the driver issues however Intel promises that they will soon iron that out with updates down the line.
In addition to that, later in the video they also tested the Ray Tracing capability which is known to be AMD’s weak point usually and to everyone’s surprise the Intel A580 managed to even hold the first place in most of the testing. Putting out the RTX 3050 to shame as it barely held up in most scenarios except for the CyberPunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and even then the A580 still held the top place.
Efficiency-wise, unfortunately, it wasn’t a sunshine and rainbow for Intel as among other cards, Arc A580 sips way more power compared to its competitors, even compared to cards that are above its class. Intel officially rates the A580 with a TDP of 185W whilst both RX 6600 and RTX 3050 are rated 132W and 130W, respectively.
Gamers Nexus in its review video shows that the A580 consumes power close to AMD’s RX 6700 XT and just slightly below NVIDIA’s RTX 4070— cards that are practically 2 levels higher than the A580. Not a good look for Intel.
Intel Arc A580 Price
The official MSRP for The Arc A580 is $179. While it may sound like quite a good deal at first because the RX 6600 initial price was $329 and $249 for the RTX 3050, unfortunately as both cards have already been released earlier, its price has gone down since then now we can easily find both cards for around $200.
In addition to that, its powerful sibling such as the A750 has also gone down in price from initially $289, to as low as $200 and even lower if you look deeper. A bit ironic as not only does the card have to compete with its competitors, but also its siblings.
Bottom line
Intel’s long overdue Arc 5 brand has finally come to the surface with the Intel Arc A580 release date dating 10 October 2023. The card is a slightly cut-down variant of its powerful sibling, the Arc 7.
The card is meant to fight head-to-head with RX 6600 and RTX 3050 and according to various benchmarks, it shows that the card really is capable and is something that both AMD and NVIDIA need to worry about. Unfortunately, the A580 suffers from how power-hungry the card is where it sips power close to the RX 6700 XT and just below RTX 4070.
It also has a bit of rough pricing as while its MSRP is sitting at a respective price of $179, its competitors and even its powerful sibling price have now also gone down in price and can be bought close to the A580’s MSRP.
