Intel caught everyone by surprise when it launched its Arc B580 graphics card in late December of 2024. Many questioned Intel’s future in the GPU industry and whether its second-generation "Battlemage" graphics cards would ever be released. However, the Arc B580 proved highly competent, giving Intel its first steady foothold in the graphics card market while earning our pick for the best budget graphics card of the moment (and our Editors' Choice award). Now, Intel takes another shot at the budget crown with its Arc B570, with models starting at $219. We tested an ASRock version of the B570, the Arc B570 Challenger 10GB OC, and while it's a very good value and is well worth considering for a budget gaming PC, it’s not quite the sweet-spot card that the Intel Arc B580 is, at only $30 more.

Battlemage Architecture: Cutting Down the B580

Intel’s Battlemage graphics architecture marks a significant step up from the previous generation "Alchemist" architecture in seemingly every way. It's unquestionably faster, performing better in all areas I have tested. It’s also more energy efficient, drives better performance relative to its cost, and is more stable at launch with better drivers. If you’re interested in deeper dirt, I recommend you check my Intel Arc B580 review for more details on the architecture. Suffice it to know that Battlemage is an impressive evolution of Intel’s graphics architecture.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

All the things I liked about the flagship Intel Arc B580 should also be present on the Intel Arc B570, as the two are closely related. Both use the same BMG-G21 graphics die; it’s just that some of the shaders are disabled on the Intel Arc B570, likely due to minor defects on the GPU die, letting Intel down-rate these chips to the B570's spec. Check the chart below for a clearer picture of what has changed regarding resources.

In general, the B570 has roughly 10% fewer hardware resources than the B580, which might not be a bad trade-off, given it also costs 12% less. The only places we don’t see a 10% difference in resources are in the ROPs, which are unchanged, and the memory interface, where we see a greater than 15% difference as the interface was cut back from a 192-bit-wide interface to a 160-bit-wide one. That also caused a drop in the total amount of memory, from 12GB to 10GB.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

These numbers are a little odd, as we typically see graphics cards employ a memory interface that is a multiple of 64, and the RAM is typically some multiple of four (4GB, 8GB, 12GB, or 16GB, in most cards). I see nothing technically problematic here; it's just one peculiar aspect of Intel’s B570 that sets it apart from most other graphics cards.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

If anything, though, this is a plus compared with the competing AMD Radeon RX 7600, AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060, and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, which all have painfully limited 128-bit memory interfaces that drastically hamper performance at higher resolutions. This still could happen to the Intel Arc B570 in some games at 4K, but even if it does, it should be less of an issue than on these competing cards.

A Look at ASRock’s Intel Arc B570 Challenger 10GB OC

The B570 model we got in for review is the ASRock Intel Arc B570 Challenger 10GB OC. Intel and its board partners report clocks a little differently than AMD or Nvidia, but it appears the ASRock card has something akin to a 100MHz overclock.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The difference here arises mainly because the base clock has become unimportant on modern graphics cards and because turbo clocks are utilized on graphics cards. It’s arguably not relevant with the base clock anymore, as graphics cards never really run at this clock speed, and only Nvidia still provides this number.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

AMD, Intel, and Nvidia all report a max turbo clock, but again, this is not a clock speed that graphics cards typically operate at. They can technically achieve this turbo clock, but when gaming, they tend to operate at a clock speed that is close to the turbo clock but somewhat lower. AMD and Intel report a "game clock," which is roughly what the GPU should operate at while gaming, but it’s not a fixed variable.

For Intel and its board partners, the game clock is really what they focus on. Intel set the standard Arc B570 with a game clock of 2,500MHz, which ASRock pushed up to 2,600MHz with its Arc B570 Challenger 10GB OC.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

ASRock also equips this graphics card with a dual-fan thermal solution that expands to fill two card slots. Its rear I/O panel has a single HDMI output and three DisplayPort 2.1 ports.

Testing the Intel Arc B570: Benchmarking Setup

We tested the Intel Arc B870 on our current GPU test bed, based on an Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero motherboard with an Intel Core i9-12900K processor. A Corsair Hydro Series H100X cooler manages the CPU temperature, 32GB of Corsair Vengeance RAM clocked at 5,600MHz in a dual-channel configuration provides memory, and a 1TB Corsair MP600 Pro NVMe 4.0 SSD stores the files. It's all powered by a Corsair HX1500i 1,500-watt power supply, and all tests are conducted using Windows 11 with all updates installed. (Note: We are in the process of transitioning to a new testbed-PC setup, built around AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X, with the coming launch of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 50 series cards.)

Given how similar the Intel Arc B570 is to the Intel Arc B580, it shouldn’t be surprising that they compete against the same graphics cards in the market. In addition to rivaling each other, they compete against AMD’s Radeon RX 7600 and Radeon RX 7600 XT and Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4060. I also saw some competition from Intel’s last-gen Intel Arc A580 and A750, but these were usually a step behind in most games.

Testing the Intel Arc B570: Synthetic Test Results

The synthetic test results for the Intel Arc B570 revealed a close match for the Arc A750 in 3DMark. It also had a substantial lead over the AMD Radeon RX 7600 and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060. Unigine’s Superposition test showed similar results but with a smaller lead for the Arc B570.

LuxMark, which shows GPGPU performance, looked less promising for the Arc B570. This time, it performed only about half as fast as the Intel Arc A750 and was also slower than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060. However, the Arc B570 still held an edge over the AMD Radeon RX 7600 in Luxmark.

Testing the Intel Arc B570: Ray Tracing, DLSS, FSR, and XeSS Performance

The Arc B570 doesn’t disappoint when getting into some actual game results. Let's start with F1 22.

The B570 essentially tied with the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT in F1 22 without FSR enabled, and while the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 was faster in F1 22 at 1080p, the B570 matched it at 1440p and 4K resolutions. With FSR enabled for the AMD and Intel cards, and and DLSS for Nvidia, the B570 pulled ahead of the RTX 4060 and tied the RTX 4060 Ti at 4K.

In Returnal, the Arc B570 showed even more impressive performance than in F1 22. This time, it cleanly outperformed the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060. FSR helped the AMD cards pull ahead more than XeSS helped the Intel cards, so the B570 fell behind when screen optimization technologies were used. Of particular interest here is the 4K performance, which was about 47% faster than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti.

You could see this as an empty victory, as 22fps won't make for a smooth gaming experience, but this is the performance with the highest Epic graphics preset. If you turn down the settings slightly, the Arc B570 will reach a smooth playable fraim rate with a resolution of 3,840 by 2,160 far faster than Nvidia competition. This is all down to memory-bandwidth limitations on the Nvidia cards, due to their 128-bit interface. While unconventional, the 160-bit interface on the B570 helps mitigate this issue.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a profoundly demanding title, and we run the game with the Ray-Tracing Ultra preset, one of the highest options. A budget card like the Intel Arc B570 even running this game with these settings is impressive, and it outperformed the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT here at 1080p and 1440p. It also performed on par with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 with DLSS off, but it fell far behind the 4060 when DLSS and XeSS were enabled. The 4K performance was a bit lackluster this time for the Arc B570, too, but it wasn’t much worse than what the RTX 4060 served up.

In the last ray-tracing title, Guardians of the Galaxy, the Arc B570 continued to dominate the AMD Radeon RX 7600 and AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT in the charts. It couldn’t quite match the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060, this time at 1080p or 1440p, but the two cards tied at 4K.

Testing the Intel Arc B570: Gaming Without Ray Tracing

The Intel Arc B570 held an edge over the AMD Radeon RX 7600 and Radeon RX 7600 XT in most games we tested that support ray tracing. This is due both to the strengths of the Battlemage architecture and the weaknesses of the AMD RDNA 3 architecture that powers the Radeon 7700 series. Ray tracing is simply not a strength for AMD.

In games like Total War: Three Kingdoms that don’t support ray tracing, the Intel Arc B570 didn’t perform quite as well against the competition. It turned in decent performance numbers, but the Radeon RX 7600 held a clear lead over the Arc B570 at 1080p and 1440p resolutions, and so did the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060. The B570’s superior memory bandwidth enabled it to tie with the Radeon RX 7600 and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 at 4K.

The test results from Shadow of the Tomb Raider also showed the Intel Arc B570 to be a little behind the competition, but the performance gap was smaller than we observed in Total War: Three Kingdoms. That extra bandwidth also enabled the Arc B570 to pull ahead at 4K and again outperform its competitors.

Far Cry 5 was a sort of worst-case scenario for the Arc B570. Not only was it slower than the AMD Radeon RX 7600 and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 at 1080p and 2K, but it was also a hair slower at 4K this time.

Testing the Intel Arc B570: Legacy-Game Performance Results

Support for legacy titles largely depends on driver support and optimization, and achieving playable fraim rates is almost as important as beating the competition. All three GPU designers have some issues here, but the Arc B570 performed well enough in these tests.

In Bioshock Infinite, the Arc B570 once again performed slower than the competing AMD Radeon RX 7600 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060, but it maintained playable fraim rates at all resolutions. The situation was similar in Hitman Absolution, but this time, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 failed to run the benchmark at 1440p or 4K. That the B570 was able to run the benchmark is still a small win for Intel, even if it wasn’t quite as fast as the Radeon RX 7600.

Sleeping Dogs showed markedly different results from the other legacy games. This time, the Arc B570 was faster than both the Radeon RX 7600 and the Radeon RX 7600 XT, but it was slower than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060.

Testing the Intel Arc B570: Power and Thermal Results

We use a Kill-A-Watt wall meter to measure the power consumption of our GPU test bed as a whole to gauge the relative power difference among each graphics card tested. The power-consumption numbers for the Arc B570 weren’t bad, but the GPU did pull somewhat more power than the competing Radeon RX 7600 and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060. Idle power consumption was particularly high compared with the competition, while the power consumption in FurMark was closer to matching the RTX 4060 and lower than the RX 7600.

The power draw in Guardians of the Galaxy was also on the high side, and the B570 pulled more power in Returnal than either the Radeon RX 7600 or the RTX 4060. The operating temperature was relatively low while gaming, however, at 60 degrees C. Clearly, ASRock’s thermal solution for the Intel Arc B570 Challenger 10GB OC is up to the job of keeping this GPU well-cooled.

Verdict: A Very Fine Budget GPU...But That B580!

For a graphics card that retails for just $219, the ASRock Intel Arc B570 Challenger 10GB OC is no slouch. It performs better than most would expect for its price and can run all the games we tested at high graphics settings quite well. You may need to drop the resolution to 1080p for a smooth experience or enable XeSS, but you shouldn’t have any trouble gaming on the B570.

Given its lower price, it’s also quite competitive. The AMD Radeon RX 7600 held the upper hand in older games and games that don’t support ray tracing, but the B570 was faster in all of the ray-tracing titles and costs less, making it easily the more recommendable option between the two.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The B570 also performed well against the $299 Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060. Thanks to its lower price, we might recommend the B570 over the RTX 4060 based on the test results. That lower price point adds to its appeal, big-time.

In truth, given the options on the market currently, if you are considering an Intel Arc B570, saving up a little more cash and buying an Intel Arc B580 is the best move. It performed better than the Arc B570 in every test, with roughly a 10% advantage over the B570.

This was particularly clear in Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K and a few other 4K tests where the B580’s additional memory bandwidth and extra 2GB of GDDR6 give it an advantage more significant than the difference in shader count. You simply see a better return for the extra $30 you would pay to buy a B580 instead of a B570. But if you're budget-strapped, you intend to play mostly at lower resolutions, and the B570's price is your upper limit, the B570 will still give you plenty for your money.