Intel Arc B580 vs. Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060

Intel has kicked off its sophomore GPUs with Arc B580, but rather than taking the fight to Nvidia’s indomitable flagship, it’s in the ring against GeForce RTX 4060. The company hopes its Battlemage architecture can win over the hearts of those in search of a budget blessing, but the specs alone don’t paint the full picture.

While first-generation Alchemist graphics cards didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet for Intel’s GPU debut, a commitment to driver updates slowly but surely changed perception of the pixel pushers. This time around, Intel’s “comfortable” that drivers won’t spoil B580, but the brand still has to do a lot of convincing to prove the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

Specs

Arc B580 is Intel’s first showcase of Xe2 architecture in a discrete graphics card, usurping the A Series with TSMC’s N5 node. It’s the largest die in the midrange, packing 19.6 billion transistors across a 272mm² surface area, but this in turn leaves it an eye-watering 65% more power hungry than Nvidia’s direct competitor.

Still Team Blue positions itself well by ticking a lot of boxes in hopes of making RTX 4060 obsolete. It recognises the growing need for 12GB of video memory, alongside increasing the memory interface by 50% and the memory bandwidth by 67% relative to Nvidia’s graphics card. Base clocks don’t do it too many favours but boost frequencies breeze past the GeForce GPU with ease. Just about everything’s bigger on Intel, except for a few cores and TOPS.

As Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace comes to the end of its run as a current-generation architecture, I would’ve at least hoped prices would reflect its age. Sadly, the 40 Series is steadfast, with most models still carrying their launch MSRP. This makes Arc B580 a more promising budget proposition, although there’s some justification for that $50 / £40 difference.

Performance

Nvidia has been hard at work hammering out driver updates since it launched 40 Series cards. As such, we’ve ensured a fair fight by starting all our benchmarks from scratch, giving a true representation of how both Arc B580 and GeForce RTX 4060 perform at the time of writing. Cue our trusty Club386 test bench.

Our 7950X3D Test PCs

Club386 carefully chooses each component in a test bench to best suit the review at hand. When you view our benchmarks, you’re not just getting an opinion, but the results of rigorous testing carried out using hardware we trust.

Shop Club386 test platform components:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
Motherboard: MSI MEG X670E ACE
Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 420 A-RGB
GPU: Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7800 XT
Memory: 64GB Kingston Fury Beast DDR5
Storage: 2TB WD_Black SN850X NVMe SSD
PSU: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 13 1,300W
Chassis: Fractal Design Torrent Grey

Build Log

How We Test

Catering towards the target market, we’ve tested Intel Arc B580 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 by running each game at FHD (1080p) or QHD (1440p) using the highest settings possible. Both are capable of running a select few titles at UHD (4K) but your mileage will vary. Although you won’t find high resolution benchmarks here, it’s still clear which way the winds blow in each head-to-head.

Benchmarks

Keen to leverage its experience with artificial intelligence, Intel takes an early triumph in Geekbench AI with a score of 14,250 to RTX 4060’s 14,031. What Arc B580 lacks in a few TOPS, it more than makes up for with brute force thanks to 67% more AI engines.

Arc B580 is pretty handy with rasterised performance, dominating RTX 4060 with a 32% lead in 3DMark Steel Nomad tests. The tables soon turn when activating ray tracing, where Nvidia reigns supreme. Fortunately, it’s a much closer competition in 3DMark Speed Way, with just 8% in it between both graphics cards, which is far easier to swallow when factoring the 17% difference in cost.

As always, synthetic benchmarks only take us so far and don’t always translate to real-world performance. Games tell a slightly different story.

Gaming

Assassin’s Creed Mirage turns in some surprising results considering Intel partnered with Ubisoft on the action-adventure game. At FHD, Arc B580 falls behind its rival, suffering an 8fps defeat, but manages to flip the script taking a marginal lead over RTX 4060 at QHD. You might need a photo finish to determine its victory at just 3fps, but a win is a win.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is something of a question mark, with RTX 4060 storming so far ahead it can barely see Arc B580 in the distance. As you might expect, Intel falling an average of 27% behind at FHD and QHD set off some alarm bells, so we did some digging.

While RTX 4060 benefits from Variable Rate Shading, Activision’s shooter doesn’t seem to realise B580 supports the same feature. Without VRS lending a helping hand, Battlemage is at a distinct disadvantage. So far, it’s unclear who bears the responsibility of fixing this issue but it does serve as a reminder that B Series GPUs aren’t without a few stumbling blocks.

A prime example of the disconnect between synthetic benchmarks and real-world performance, Cyberpunk 2077 showcases Arc B580’s ray tracing prowess. The card casts a small shadow over RTX 4060 at both resolutions in the amount of 3-4fps.

Admittedly, neither model gets anywhere near that coveted 60fps, but CD Projekt Red’s open-world RPG remains one of the most brutal benchmarks in our roster. DLSS and XeSS could lend a helping hand to get them over the line, alongside AMD FSR Frame Generation that’s available to both cards, but no upscalers were used in this test.

Taking the gold medal in both categories, Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail easily favours Intel Arc B580, affording it up to a 9fps lead at QHD. RTX 4060 is noticeably more stable at FHD with 30% better minimum frame rates, but there’s otherwise parity across the board.

Average performance is practically neck-and-neck running Forza Motorsport at FHD using ray tracing, but Arc B580 is significantly more stable. You’re certainly going to notice RTX 4060 frame rates halving in a fast-paced racing game compared to Intel’s 30% margin.

Intel laps its rival when raising resolutions to QHD, comfortably ahead by 10fps. Once again, Battlemage keeps its minimums in check, likely due to its higher bandwidth, while Nvidia needs a pit stop whenever its performance dips.

As a strategy game, Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is more CPU-bound than GPU, but that doesn’t stop Intel from flexing. It just barely takes the crown at lower resolutions with a more decisive 9fps victory at QHD. Pair that with consistently better lowest 1% frames and Battlemage paints the battlefield blue.

There are no losers when it comes to Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction, as both graphics cards walk away with a triple-digit fps. However, maximising your monitor’s refresh rate requires the finer touch of Arc B580 tickling the 200fps mark at FHD with 22fps more than RTX 4060. Even when the fight gets a little tougher at QHD, Intel remains composed with a 17% differential.

Efficiency

It’s not surprising to see Arc B580 pull more power to feed its beefier specs, requiring between 31-33W at both idle and under load than Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060. Still, it goes some ways to justifying its 15% increase with upfront savings and winning 7.5/10 tests.

Arc B580 keeps a cool head despite all that extra energy, largely thanks to Intel’s clever cooler. Dual fans and rear cutouts make the first-party Limited Edition run at just 55°C, undercutting RTX 4060 by 5°C. Not bad at all for such a dinky design.

Both Intel and Nvidia remain extremely quiet and barely noticeable to the ear. Still, Arc B580 being both cooler and quieter makes it the undisputed champion here, even if it’s by just 0.8dBA.

Upscaling

Battlemage brings with it new Intel XeSS 2 tech to help bolster your frame rates and give you the edge in ray tracing. XeSS-SR (Super Resolution) works by rendering natively using a lower resolution, then leaning on an AI network to recreate the image at a higher resolution. XeSS-FG (Frame Generation) is the star of the show, using neural networks alongside motion vectors and depth to create interpolated frames. Essentially, for each native or upscaled frame, there is another one slotted in between.

Since the features are decoupled, you can use each of them independently. Testing the beta build in F1 24, XeSS-SR performs admirably with a 66% uplift in average frame rates using Performance mode, and up to 284% in tandem with XeSS-FR.

The primary issue is support. Currently, 161 games include some form of XeSS and its new Frame Generation will take a while to catch up. There are only ten games planned for XeSS 2 at launch with no sign of what the future holds.

Meanwhile, Nvidia DLSS (Deep-learning super sampling) is long established, boasting over 600 applications with adoption now commonplace due to cemented practices. Granted, there are far fewer games that bake in DLSS 3, which includes Frame Generation, but that number still sits around 150.

As it stands, DLSS is exclusive to Nvidia cards. While you’ll get the most out of XeSS using B580, the upscaler is agnostic and works all brands. Overall, we don’t recommend choosing a graphics card solely based on its upscaling properties as there’s no guarantee upcoming games will include your preferred route, but it’s certainly good to keep in mind before purchasing.

Conclusion

Intel Arc B580 doesn’t quite hit a home run, but bests GeForce RTX 4060 in enough tests that it’s tough to consider Nvidia unless you’re a stickler for efficiency and don’t mind paying a premium. As it stands, Battlemage is the cheaper option that’s better for QHD gaming and has more AI chops.

The prevalence of DLSS 3 might sway you toward Team Green, particularly as it’s tried and tested, having proved itself the cleanest upscaler with the least artifacting. However, given the same amount of time Nvidia had to grow its feature, XeSS 2 adoption will steadily spread.

Although Arc B580 has successfully staged a coup in the sub-$300 graphics card space, it’s worth noting that the writing may be on the wall. Nvidia has its next-generation GPUs on the horizon, which could either replace RTX 4060 entirely or herald enough of a discount that it changes our perceived value. For now, though, you can’t get a better budget offering than Battlemage.

Intel Arc B580

A long overdue disruption, Arc B580 represents a welcome step in the right direction for entry-level graphics cards. Read our review.

Buy from Amazon

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060

Representing the most affordable way to get Nvidia DLSS 3, RTX 4060 still stands up as one of the better graphics cards for gaming at FHD and QHD resolutions. Read our review.

Buy from Amazon