The Intel ARC B580 is Broken...on Older Systems

The Intel ARC B580 is supposed to be the Best Budget GPU but we found some serious problems when testing it as a GPU upgrade for older systems. This GPU isn't what you might expect if you wanted to replace a GTX 1660...in a lot of ways the B580 framerates and performance will be way below expectations.

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - B580 vs Older System Upgrade
1:05 - A GTX 1060 / GTX 1660 Replacement
1:39 - Test System (Z390 w/ ReBar)
2:50 - Understanding the Charts
3:13 - The Good News (ReBar ON)
6:12 - The B580 Falls Apart (ReBar ON)
8:22 - What's going ON? Utilization, PCIe, Drivers etc.
10:33 - The ReBar Discussion & A Workaround
13:14 - A Good GPU, RUINED for Upgrades

Review unit provided free of charge by Intel. As per Hardware Canucks guidelines, no review direction was received from manufacturer. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

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[HardwareCanucks]

After spending a few days reading and responding to the comments I think its time to address a few things and perhaps clear up some confusion as well as offer a commitment to future testing, which is currently ongoing.

- We should have done a better job of communicating the fact that ReBar was indeed enabled for all testing done between 3:13 and 10:31, so the lion's share of the video

- The intent was to show how situations where ReBar being enabled doesn't necessarily lead to expected performance even on platforms that support ReBar (9th Gen in this case).

- A clear mention, early in the video, should have been made about this being a situation where we are mixing baseline B580 requirements (ReBar & PCIe Gen 3) with hardware outside of Intel's official support as per their Quick Start Guide. Note this is due to the fact that official support is tied to ReBar, NOT a given platform (this comes direct from our conversations with Intel, as well a interviews given by Intel when Alchemist launched). Intel never officially supported ReBar on 9th Gen & earlier platforms, but mobo manufacturers backported it.

- We will continually defend the rights of PC Gamers to upgrade their systems, regardless of how old they are, provided the platforms being discussed don't provide a substantial bottleneck for said upgrades. We genuinely feel that for many games at 1080p and most titles at 1440p, the 9600K & higher end 9th Gen CPUs still provide adequate CPU performance for GPUs of the B580's caliber. It doesn't sit well with us that Intel effectively cut those people out while their own motherboard partners were substantially more inclusive about ReBar support. This walled-garden approach for ReBar from Intel should never be celebrated, let alone used as a defense for the B580's high degree of performance variability on lower end or older CPUs.

- HUB has published a video which validates our results, though using a Ryzen 5 2600X. Again, not officially supported by Intel but very much a CPU that's still got a lot of life left in it on a platform that's one of the best ever created (AM4).

Finally, I want to mention that we've already started testing budget-focused Ryzen 3000 and Intel 10th Gen CPU with the B580 and initial results paint the same picture you've seen here with 9th Gen. This is a concern that could have been mentioned in this video. Whether or not this is due to excess driver overhead or something else, it looks like the B580 under-performs unless it is paired up with a much faster CPU. Again we are cross-validating everything and will only publish once we are 1000% confident in the results.

[Meddixi]

I think Intel was very verbose about the fact you need a newish system and REBAR is a must.

[jblps]

I feel like I'm colorblind looking at these charts, they are really confusing.

[RybieRy]

Are these issues also on 10th gen intel platforms? The listed supported CPU's are 10th and later.

To avoid confusion, I wrote this comment before the title was changed.

[ashtonlipscomb]

finally, someone has mentioned that you could just use
ReBarUEFI for non-ReBar-supported hardware

[JaySheridan]

Thank you for this. I'm in this exact upgrade situation, and appreciate someone checking this out. Yes, I've seen the "requirements, " but I wonder how bad it could actually be if you don't meet them. Nobody ever checks these older systems. I would love to breathe just a little more life into my system for a couple hundred dollars, but i can never tell if it's actually worth it.

[harbinger]

Test would have made more sense if you tested with 10th gen Intel and Ryzen 3000.

[nismo]

I'm glad that Intel is using your input on this issue! I am hopeful that they will be able to address this with a driver update. I have a 250 dollar b580 on a watchlist. I'm running a two gen old cpu (Ryzen 9 5900X) so I'm curious about what kind of performance I'll get with it. I'm also eyeballing the rx9070 when it's released next month. I'm done with Nvidia for now because they are going nuts with the pricing. A 2500 dollar gpu?!?!!?? COME ON MAN! We NEED more competition in this market!!

[GlimmyGOD]

Why didn't you compare the 9th gen Intel with a 10th gen part? 10th gen is the minimum cpu for Intel that they say officially supports rebar. Without doing this one could say this is only proving these rebar on older systems workarounds are faulty somehow.

[MarioGoatse]

This really doesn't surprise me TBH. I bet they prioritised their drivers for later CPUs. I'd like too see a wider test with 10th, 11th, and 12th gen CPUs, alongside the same year Ryzens, just too see if there's a cut off, or if it affects them too

[michael_dob]

This is EXACTLY what happened with my father’s computer. The B580 on his i5 8400 was worse than his GTX 1660, especially on Baulders Gate. We assumed it was the drivers. Thanks for confirming that for us!

[iBolski]

Good to know. I'm running on a B450M DS3H Gigabyte motherboard with my AMD Ryzen 5 3600. It does have Rebar support in the bios, so i'm wondering if this would still be a good pick up for me for my GTX-1660 that I have? I built the PC in 2020. For most of the games I have, it still plays as good as ever, but I do want to upgrade the GPU to get some more life out of it before I have to rebuild the entire system due to aging hardware (motherboard, CPU). I can upgrade to a better CPU, but I don't know if it would be worth it, along with going for the B580.

[sdfopsdmsdofjmp]

I'd love to see you make a video where you try to figure out exactly how weak a CPU has to be in order to cause these problems. Will (for example) a 3600, 3700x, 5600, 5700x3d run into these issues. If yes, which ones and in which games.

[IntelArcTesting]

I haven’t watched video fully but I suspect someone finally discovered the driver overhead on arc. Cpu performance is more important for arc than it is for Nvidia or AMD.

Edit:
I was right. Have known this issue for a while now and was also present on Alchemist. Have spread some words around on the subreddit but not enough for some big YouTube channel to point it out and test it. Hopefully if this gets enough attention Intel can improve upon it. I personally have been very careful recommending Arc to users with anything lower end than a Ryzen 5 5600 or i5 12400f.

[JCC]

Yea not trying to fanboy for Intel here BUT just go look at Intels page for B580, Intel CPU’s before 10th gen and AMD before 3000 series are NOT officially supported by B580.

[gauravbisht]

This type of practical use case tests is needed more often nowadays.

[jaakanshorter]

I'm glad you were honest and open about reporting issues you ran into with Intel. It seems like many reviewers haven't done that or are not open about it.

[regwatson]

Too many review sites rushed in and reviewed based on the 9800X3D and then told viewers that ARC was the best new thing since sliced bread - now these cards are sold out and have been back ordered and some people are going to find that that budget card is going to cost them a lot more to get the performance they were expecting. Props to Hardware Canucks for getting this info out so some can avoid throwing good money away. The Other reviewers are now scrambling to catch you up !

[MrSmitheroons]

Thanks for looking into this! Your video covers a lot of ground Hardware Unboxed's first follow-up didn't, which was a bit confusing when watching their video first. Though TBH the journey through this video was a bit of an Odyssey -- not straight-forward to understand, IMO! That said, especially with Hardware Unboxed's second follow-up video testing several more CPUs, it's clear the B580 is more CPU-heavy to run than a 4060, which they tested against.

So, once again, thank you for breaking this story! I'm watching the ads on this again and leaving a like and a comment to boost it in the algorithm. Really important that perf of a value GPU scales with an overall value-priced system!

[AshtonCoolman]

This is right up my alley because I spent an hour getting an Arc A380 working on my old 9900K+ Gigabyte Z390 system yesterday. I had to enable ReBAR as well as disable CSM to get it to post. The CSM part was what I initially missed and it was frustrating. So far, the Arc is working well on the Z390 board and I'm looking forward to getting a B580 to upgrade it to.