Intel Arc A580 Review ft. Sparkle Orc

I have to say I was taken by surprise when Intel reached out and offered me a review sample of the new Arc A580. This was the GPU announced alongside the A750 and A770, but quickly vanished into the ether and was presumed by many to have been quietly cancelled. Not so, as today the A580 is hitting the market with a $179 MSRP, and we've been putting it through its paces over the last week. It's safe to say it is somewhat of a mixed bag.

Starting with the positives, as a slightly cut-down A750, using the same ACM-G10 silicon, the A580 is generally a capable gaming graphics card considering the price point. Across my testing it delivered near-60FPS experiences in pretty much every game at 1080p High settings, with the only real exception being The Last of Us Part 1. Its performance is generally comparable to the RX 6600, though it is 6% slower on average, while it is 6% ahead of the RTX 2060, and just 7% behind the Arc A750.

Due to the relatively wide 256-bit memory interface – at least in relation to other GPUs in this market segment – the A580 also scales well at 1440p, where it is on average 5% faster than the RX 6600. The only trouble is the silicon lacks the compute power to really be effective at this resolution, as many titles we tested dropped into the 30-40FPS region, even with slightly dialled down image quality settings.

Arguably more importantly, however, is just how far Arc has come since its rocky launch a year ago, and my testing over the last week is further evidence of this. I’d say that the A580 is much easier to recommend than either of the A750 or A770 were at launch, thanks to the very clear improvements in driver stability. I didn’t experience any crashes or BSODs during my testing, fan control is a lot less buggy now, and the Arc Control panel is significantly more responsive than I remember.

Minor issues do still persist, such as a couple of visual glitches in Ratchet and Clank and Red Dead Redemption 2 (as shown in the video review), while idle power draw is still too high, with the A580 drawing 45W just sitting on the desktop. ReBar remains effectively required for smooth gaming performance, too.

Those things may be annoying, but easily the most prominent quirk you’ll notice is just how variable performance can be from game to game. We saw titles including Ratchet and Clank and RDR2 where the A580 is an absolute world beater and looks incredibly strong for the price. But for every one of those, there’s the likes of Total War: Warhammer III which delivers poor 1% lows, or The Last of Us Part 1 where the A580 is over 20% slower than the RX 6600.

Indeed, the RX 6600 is clearly the main competitor the the A580, and I'd have to say it is generally the smarter choice. It's currently retailing well below its launch MSRP in both the UK and US, while it is generally a touch faster than the A580. It's also much more of a known quantity – you know what sort of gaming performance you're getting from the RX 6600 across the board, while the same can't always be said of the A580.

It doesn't help that the A580 is woefully inefficient – at least, the factory overclocked Sparkle Orc model is. For reasons I can't quite fathom, Sparkle increased the power target from the 185W reference figure up to 215W, and the result is the A580 draws 61% more power (!) than the RX 6600 on average. In other words, the RX 6600 offers performance per Watt that is 74% better than the A580. The Orc is also pretty loud, with the fans ramping up to 2300RPM in my testing, so there is definitely some work to be done there.

Taken as a whole though, the Intel Arc A580 is – as I said – much easier to recommend at launch than its previous Alchemist forebears, and if you are a general PC enthusiast who likes to have a play with new tech, the idea of owning an Intel GPU is still pretty neat. I still feel that the majority of PC gamers would be better served by the RX 6600 for the reasons outlined above, but the A580 shows Intel is moving in the right direction.

We don't have confirmed UK pricing yet, but the A580 is landing today for $179.

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Pros

• Decent 1080p gaming performance at High settings.
• Scales better than the competition at 1440p, though not all games are viable at this resolution.
• Driver stability is vastly improved compared to the A750/A770 launch.
• 8GB VRAM makes sense for the price point.
• Ray tracing and XeSS are supported.

Cons

• Performance can vary significantly from game to game.
• RX 6600 is slightly faster for a similar price and is more consistent across the board.
• Power draw exceeds 200W in most games.
• Efficiency is terrible, worse than even the GTX 1060 6GB from 2016.
• Sparkle Orc card is too loud.

KitGuru says: Intel's Arc A580 may not be a clear winner over the RX 6600, but it gives us real hope for Battlemage.

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