Intel introduced the Intel Arc A580 graphics card

After a long wait, the Intel Arc A580 graphics card has finally arrived on the shelves. It was announced as early as 2022 and the expected start of sales was the beginning of this year. Months passed, and at the same time the price of the existing Arc A750 card decreased. Justifiably, many wondered if Intel simply abandoned the project. Apparently not, because the card is still available for purchase and has quite a few tricks that might convince certain users.

Functionally, the Arc A580 looks very similar to the A750 and A770 8GB. The key difference is that the four additional Xe cores are disabled along with the accompanying shadow drives and XMX units. But it still has a full 256-bit memory interface with the same 8GB GDDR6 VRAM as previous Arc models.

At the moment, the Arc A750 card is available for around 200-250 euros, which places it among the direct competitors of the newer A580 card, which has a starting retail price of around 200 euros. For a few tens of euros moreč so you get 17 percent moreč shaders and computer power, which is a much more attractive option than buying a new A580. We expect that soon after the launch the prices of the new cards will drop by at least a few tens of euros, otherwise it may happen that the card will be overshadowed by other models from the same family.

The Arc A580 also has to beat the RTX 3050 and RTX 3060, which are in the same price range. The A580 should at least beat the 3050 in terms of performance. There's also the newer RTX 4060 card, which is currently available for 300 euros and some change. Although the #140 is more expensive, it is also more powerful, especially when using "ray tracing".

AMD's closest competitor is the RX 6600 (without XT), which was sold for less than 200 euros in recent months. So, in terms of price, the two cards are very equal. What about performance? Drivers? Energy consumption? Intel drivers are improving, but for now they are not at the same level as the competition. However, we expect performance at a very similar level to that of the aforementioned competition. The maximum consumption of the new card is limited to 185 W, although we can expect fans to exceed this value. 

The Intel Arc A580 is, on paper, a good card with good value between price and performance. Intel needs to close the price gap between the Arc A580 and the Arc A750 before it can be recommended for purchase.