Intel Arc B570 Review: Efficient Xe2 Performance At An Affordable Price

Exploring Intel’s mid-range GPU that balances performance, features, and thermals to deliver excellent value in modern gaming builds

Hardware by Katmin on Jun 04, 2025

The Intel Arc B580 and B570 GPUs have become formidable competitors in the low-cost graphics card industry thanks to their remarkable features and affordable prices. These cards show that software enhancements can have a substantial impact on raw hardware capabilities, even when they were first delayed by driver updates.

Evaluating GPU performance solely on pricey test benches may not accurately represent low-cost, real-world setups. Understanding how cost, hardware capabilities, and driver efficiency are balanced is essential for assessing value in this sector.

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Specifications and Performance Overview

The B580 and B570 share a typical architecture but differ in key specifications that influence performance and price. The B580 features 20 Xe cores, 2,560 shading units, and 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, driven by a boost clock of 2,250 MHz.

In contrast, the B570 reduces cores to 18 Xe units (2,304 shading units) and memory to 10 GB on a 160-bit bus, with a slightly lower boost clock of 2,100 MHz. Despite these reductions, the B570 delivers approximately 87 percent of the B580’s performance while consuming around 89 percent of its power, making it a compelling option at its $220 price point.

The $250 B580 may outperform the Radeon RX 7600 and the NVIDIA RTX 4060 in many scenarios, offering excellent value for the money.

Power Consumption and Efficiency

Power efficiency is a crucial factor in budget builds. In titles such as Alan Wake 2, the B570 operates at roughly four joules per frame, matching the B580’s efficiency but trailing behind NVIDIA’s RTX 4060, which achieves just 3.19 joules per frame.

The Radeon RX 7600 also offers competitive efficiency, consuming approximately 4.74 joules per frame; however, it falls behind the B570 in overall performance. In Hellblade 2, the B570 sustains about 87 percent of the B580’s performance using 88 percent of its power.

Once again, the RTX 4060 demonstrates superior power efficiency, emphasizing that while Intel’s hardware is promising, NVIDIA maintains a lead in this metric.

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Performance of Ray Tracing

The B570 and B580 maintain decent 1080p frame rates with DirectX Ray Tracing (DXR) features turned on when ray tracing is enabled. The B580 is 15% faster than the B570 in Alan Wake 2, although the RTX 4060 is marginally faster and produces fewer frame time spikes.

The B570 outperforms the previous-generation Arc A770 by around 10 percent and the A750 by 20 percent. Compared to the RX 7600, the B570 maintains a 31 percent lead within this ray-traced workload.

In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the B570 secures 87 percent of the B580’s ray-traced performance for 89 percent of the power. The RTX 4060 again claims the top spot, beating the B580, while the RX 7600 struggles, delivering only 72 percent of the B570’s performance with a slight power penalty.

Rasterization Benchmarks

Rasterization performance varies across titles. In Black Myth: Wukong, the B580 enjoys just a 10 percent advantage over the B570, but the RTX 4060, now an older GPU, delivers a 22 percent lead over the B570.

Even a 2020-era RTX 3060 can outpace the B570 in this sequence of long benchmarks, raising questions about bandwidth and compute limitations. Frame time variability within a single benchmark sequence suggests that overall averages can sometimes obscure essential performance swings.

In Forza Horizon 5, headline results appear modest: the B580 is 12 percent ahead of the B570, but the RTX 4060 is 18 percent faster than the B570. The B570 matches the RX 7600 in average frame rate, yet frame time dips on the B570 reveal occasional stutters that do not affect the A770 or A750. Despite this, the B570 still outperforms the A770 by 14% and the A750 by 18%.

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Driver Overhead and Budget Builds

Most reviews isolate GPU performance by pairing graphics cards with high-end CPUs—commonly something like a Ryzen 7 7800X3D—although a $200 GPU will more often complement a mid-range or budget CPU.

Intel’s Arc GPUs incur significant driver overhead, which becomes more pronounced on lower-end systems that lack PCIe 4.0 support and Resizable BAR. To illustrate this, a test was conducted by installing the B570 and RTX 4060 on a PCIe 3.0 motherboard paired with a Ryzen 5 3600 processor. Both cards were evaluated using console-equivalent settings for Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p, 1440p, and 4 K.

At 1080 p, the B570 retains only 39 percent of its high-end performance when paired with the Ryzen 5 3600, whereas the RTX 4060 loses about half its performance, still holding the lead. The RTX 4060 on the same CPU runs 45 percent faster than the B570, highlighting Intel’s need to improve driver efficiency for budget builds.

At 1440 p with the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, the RTX 4060 is just six percentage points ahead of the B570; swapping to the Ryzen 5 3600 expands that lead to 37 percent. Finally, at 4K, the RTX 4060 should suffer from PCIe bandwidth constraints, but instead, it outperforms the B570 by 79 percent on the 7800X3D.

On the 3600, the RTX 4060 is 81 percent faster, demonstrating that driver inefficiencies on Intel’s side heavily penalize performance in CPU-limited scenarios.

In Starfield, even with the 7800X3D, the RTX 4060 outperforms the B570 by 24 percent at 1080p. When paired with the Ryzen 5 3600, that advantage increases to 109 percent. The RTX 460 retains 96 percent of its performance compared to just 56 percent for the B570 on the same CPU, underscoring Intel’s driver challenges again.

These results reveal that while raw hardware might appear competitive on premium test benches, actual performance in budget-oriented systems tells a very different story.

Intel, Arc B570, Review, Efficient Xe2, Performance, Affordable Price, NoobFeed

Overall Thoughts

With the B580, a 12 GB card that costs $250 and can match or surpass the RTX 4060, a $50 more expensive card, Intel has redefined value. In many tasks, it outperforms the $270 RX 7600 as well.

For about $220, the B570 boasts 10 GB of memory and powerful performance, making it an attractive value offering for budget-conscious consumers despite potentially less predictable results. Assuming you can find one in stock, choosing the B580 makes sense if you want more horsepower and memory.

However, you should consider the role of drivers and CPU pairing. To fully harness Arc’s potential in CPU-limited scenarios, you need a modern CPU with PCIe 4.0 support and a Resizable BAR.

Otherwise, you risk significant performance losses compared to competing GPUs. In budget reviews, isolating GPU performance on elite CPUs may mislead readers about real-world experiences.

Moving forward, both reviewers and consumers should place greater emphasis on testing configurations that closely mirror the systems for which these cards are most likely to be used.

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