ASRock’s Intel Arc B570 graphics card seemingly can’t wait its turn, as a user has received one ahead of release. It’s possible that keeping the same naming scheme and spreading the launch may have confused some retailers, although that’s hardly an excuse given it’s the same kind of character swap we’ve seen from other brands.
First, we had early listings from a German retailer, then we had a reviewer who received a card way ahead of the official launch date. Today, we have a regular customer who just got one from a store. It appears that Intel’s choice of keeping the same naming convention as its last-gen cards may be the cause of these shipments.
Unlike AMD and Nvidia which use numbers to separate each generation, Intel went with letters, A for Alchemist, B for Battlemage, C for Celestial, and D for Druid. While more elegant, it’s less clear and indicative for those who don’t follow hardware news. This seemingly confused some retailers on sending Arc B Series cards, mistaking them for older A Series. It’s not helped by the scattered release schedule either.
Regardless of the reason, PCGH user Cross-Flow is now the lucky owner of an ASRock Arc B570 Challenger. Unfortunately, since Intel hasn’t officially launched this GPU and won’t until January 16, there are no compatible drivers available. Naturally, this hasn’t stopped the curious user from searching for a way to make it work.
Cross-Flow started by forcing the Arc B580 driver installation, ignoring errors and testing every file in the executable directory. Funnily enough, it did work, somewhat. Fortune does favour the bold after all, albeit with a couple of caveats.
The system recognises B570 as a B580 with 15 Xe cores, which is oddly the wrong amount for both models. B580 contains 20 Xe cores, while Intel has already revealed B570 will pack 18 Xe cores when it lands on shelves. At the very least, the user’s system spots the correct 10GB of VRAM under the hood.
Hardware detection aside, the card ran fine according to Cross-Flow. It’s able to play games like WoW Classic and Deus Ex 3 with FreeSync in both fullscreen and windowed modes, and even idle with a multi-monitor setup. At least it’s not just an expensive paperweight.
To be clear, while other forum users have indicated shipment of their B570 cards, this is not a worldwide issue, but rather a mistake made by one retailer. As for why they have it in inventory this early, the reason could be that Intel is stocking up before release to avoid repetition of the B580 launch.
