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It's strange to think it has now been a year – almost to the day – since Intel launched the A750 and A770 GPUs. Stranger still is the fact that the A580 was also announced alongside those graphics cards, yet it went completely unheard of for months on end. That changes today, however, as the A580 has finally landed, with Intel targeting a $179 MSRP. We put it through its paces and find out how it stacks up against the competition.
When I reviewed both the Intel A750 and A770 this time last year, my main takeaway was how Intel's Alchemist silicon showed promise, but the driver side was really holding things back. Thankfully, Intel has been working continuously to improve things, and when I revisited the A770 earlier this year, it was impressive just how far things had come.
Now, with the launch of the Intel Arc A580, it's time to see if Alchemist has what it takes to compete at the $179 price point, with the likes of the RX 6600 and RTX 3050 currently occupying this market segment. This review also marks Sparkle's return to our pages, with the former Nvidia partner back in the business making Intel-based graphics cards. Let's find out what it can bring to the party…
If you want to read this review as a single page, click HERE.
| Arc A770 | Arc A750 | Arc A580 | Arc A380 | |
| Silicon | ACM-G10 | ACM-G10 | ACM-G10 | ACM-G11 |
| Process | TSMC N6 | TSMC N6 | TSMC N6 | TSMC N6 |
| Render Slices | 8 | 7 | 6 | 2 |
| Xe Cores | 32 | 28 | 24 | 8 |
| Shaders | 4096 | 3584 | 3072 | 1024 |
| XMX Engines | 512 | 448 | 384 | 128 |
| RT Units | 32 | 28 | 24 | 8 |
| Texture Units | 256 | 224 | 192 | 64 |
| ROPs | 128 | 112 | 96 | 32 |
| Graphics Clock | 2100 MHz | 2050 MHz | 1700 MHz | 2000 MHZ |
| Memory Config | 8/16GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 | 6GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Data Rate | 17.5 Gbps | 16 Gbps | 16 Gbps | 15.5 Gbps |
| Memory Interface | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 96-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 560 GB/s | 512 GB/s | 512 GB/s | 186 GB/s |
| PCIe Interface | Gen 4 x16 | Gen 4 x16 | Gen 4 x16 | Gen 4 x8 |
| TBP | 225W | 225W | 185W | 75W |
First, it's worth recapping the specs here. With the A580, Intel is continuing to use its ACM-GM10 silicon – the GPU that was the basis of both the A750 and A770. This time, the A580 is cut down and uses just 6 render slices, or 24 Xe cores. Each Xe core offers 16 vector engines, with each vector engine housing eight FP32 ALUs, for a grand total of 3072. Each Xe core is accompanied by a Ray Tracing Unit, while we also find 192 TMUs and 96 ROPs.
The memory subsystem, meanwhile, is identical to the A750. That means we find 8GB of GDDR6 operating at 16Gbps, with a 256-bit memory interface, giving a total memory bandwidth of 512 GB/s.
Clock speed has been cut down for the A580 however, with a 1.7GHz reference clock, but as we shall see, Sparkle has increased this to 2GHz via a factory overclock.
Lastly, total board power is rated at 185W, but this has also been increased by Sparkle, something we look at closely in this review using our in-depth power testing methodology.
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