Intel Rolls Out Its Lunar Lake-Generation Xe2 Graphics to Arc B-series Cards
Intel launched the Xe2 graphics architecture in August as part of the Core Ultra 200V series – moon lake ——Mobile CPU. Now, the company is integrating that architecture into its new generation of Arc standalone desktop graphics cards, the B-series, with hardware and software updates that could help it gain even more traction than the A-series.
The company positions the $249 B580 and $219 B570 as 1440p cards with more than 8GB of memory, capable of handling ray tracing, and relying on its XeSS 2 upgrade and optimization technology — which adds frame generation (XeSS-FG ), as well as Nvidia’s DLSS 3 Optical Flow Acceleration and AMD’s Fluid Motion Framework family – improving performance and low-latency capabilities.
There’s a lot to like about the first generation Arc cards (I tested A750), but it will take a lot of effort to dislodge Nvidia—even if AMD recently decided to abandon high-end competition. Intel claims cost-effectiveness AMD Radeon RX 7600 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 on average, but it takes more effort to get people out of the habit of buying or recommending.
Intel Arc B Series Specifications
| Intel Arc B580 | Intel Arc B570 | |
|---|---|---|
| memory | 12GBGDDR6 | 10GBGDDR6 |
| Memory bandwidth (GBps) | Chapter 456 | 380 |
| GPU clock (GHz, base boost) | 2.67 | 2.50 |
| memory interface | 192 bits | 160 bits |
| Xe Core/Ray Tracing Unit | 20 | 18 |
| Render slices | 5 | 5 |
| XMX AI Engine/Peak Integer TOPS | 140/233 | 144/203 |
| TGP (Watts) | 190 | 160 |
| power connector | 8 pins | 8 pins |
| connect | 3 DP 2.1, 1 HDMI 2.1 | 3 DP 2.1, 1 HDMI 2.1 |
| bus | PCIe 4×8 | PCIe 4×8 |
| starting price | $249 | $219 |
| Ship date | December 13, 2024 | January 16, 2024 |
There will be B580 limited editions of Intel’s internal reference design, as well as B570 models from third parties, notably Acer (Nitro series) and ASRock (Steel Legend and Challenger series), among others. These cards are designed for low power PSU systems with rated board power requirements below 200 watts.
Like most of their competitors, they install in eight-lane PCI 4 slots and use a single eight-pin power connector, making them ideal for upgrading fairly old systems or systems with low-capacity power supplies such as 500 or 600 watts. choose. I’ll know if it’s worth it once I test this card.
new features
Frame generation relies heavily on machine learning to interpolate between two synthetically generated frames; there are two separate AI frameworks, one that counts pixel-to-pixel changes (consecutive static frames) and one that counts vectors to the change of vector (continuous motion trajectory). It then calculates the correct way to mix the two.
Therefore, to perform FG, the XMX data type introduced by Lunar Lake needs to be upgraded; this means that it will not work with older cards or Core Ultra 100 series integrated GPUs. However, they do use the same upgrade algorithm.
Along with XeSS-FG, the cards also feature Xe Low Latency, a click-to-display workflow that synchronizes input devices when the GPU needs input to render to the screen, rather than a more rushed waiting workflow that can introduce lag. .
There’s also a new driver-based low-latency mode. The updated Intel Graphics Control Panel adds several features that Arc users have requested: more granular overclocking built into the app, with a better interface, scaling method and mode controls on a per-monitor basis, and FPS in performance metrics .
Intel has also updated Artificial Intelligence Playground Software for Arc GPU that brings together various models (stable diffusion for image generation and others for chat, upscaling, stylization, etc.) into version 2.0.
