At the outset, it should not be forgotten that the Arc A580 is a product that Intel introduced (or released?) already last September. Even then, Arc desktop graphics cards were considered to be heavily delayed, even with regard to Intel’s official statement, which promised cards for specific dates, but repeatedly postponed them. Arc A580 specifications were already published last September, but the card did not appear on sale even in October, November… in short, we waited until the end of the year and then from the beginning of this year until now.
Intel was probably waiting for new versions of the drivers that, after improving the tragic performance under DirectX9, also solved the weak performance in DirectX11. However, the Arc A580 is here, the specs have remained the same (except for the TDP, which has gone from 175 to 185 watts) and the official price has been set at $179.
The card produced by Sparkle and adhering to the reference parameters was tested by the editors of the TechPowerUp website:
Arc A580 Performance (TechPowerUp)
In terms of performance, the Arc A580 fits between the GeForce RTX 2060 and the Radeon RX 6600 (without XT). Compared to GeForce, it is about 10% faster, Radeon RX 6600 surpasses it by 5%.
While the current cards of this performance level from AMD and Nvidia quietly consume units of watts, the Arc A580, similar to the A750 and A770 models released last year, claims about 40 watts. Here, Intel did not manage to improve the situation using drivers (the situation is also similar when playing video, where competing products get by with ~10 watts, while Arc needs ~50 watts, and when connecting multiple monitors, when alternatives from AMD and Nvidia claim about 10 -20 watts while the Arc needs over 40 watts).
The graphics card consumes 210 watts under gaming load. Significantly faster hardware such as Radeon RX 7600, GeForce RTX 4060, GeForce RTX 4060 Ti etc. fit between ~130 to ~150 watts.
In terms of performance per watt, the Arc A580 comes out quite tragically, basically it can be compared with hardware released in 2019, i.e. four years ago. Only GeForce GTX 1660 Super and Radeon RX 5700 XT fare worse in the graph, while (unfortunately for Arc) there is an error in the graph in the position of Radeon RX 5700 XT. If you look at the performance graphs (where the Radeon RX 5700 XT is 9% faster than the Arc A580) and the consumption graphs (where the Radeon RX 570 XT consumes 2% more than the Arc A580), it should be slightly better than the Arc (apparently there was a typo, and instead of the value “8.1 W” “9.1 W” entered the graph). The Arc A580’s position is quite poor compared to current (and significantly faster) cards such as Radeon RX 7600 and GeForce RTX 4060.
Intel is trying to compensate for these shortcomings with a price that was set at $179 and for which some models can actually be purchased at some retailers. The closest competitor is the Radeon RX 6600, which is currently available from $204 (Amazon). Last week it was on sale starting at $199, so the price is moving slightly.
The question is whether the $20-25 lower price can be considered adequate compensation for the ~70 watts higher consumption in 3D and ~50 watts consumption in video playback, which today’s integrated graphics manage at (full CPU consumption including graphics) low units of watts. However, the Arc A580 is released and anyone who is interested in the card can enjoy it.
2023-10-10 22:00:09
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