Intel Arc A580 Review ft. Sparkle Orc

1. Introduction2. Meet the Sparkle Arc A580 Orc3. Testing Methodology4. Reference vs Factory Overclocked Scaling5. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy6. 3DMark DirectX Raytracing7. Assassin's Creed Valhalla8. Cyberpunk 20779. Forza Horizon 510. God of War11. Horizon Zero Dawn12. The Last of Us Part 113. A Plague Tale: Requiem14. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart15. Red Dead Redemption 216. Resident Evil 417. Returnal18. Total War: Warhammer III19. Performance Summary (12-Game Average)20. Cost Per Frame Analysis21. Ray Tracing: Cyberpunk 207722. Ray Tracing: Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart23. Ray Tracing: Returnal24. Ray Tracing: Shadow of the Tomb Raider25. Clock Speed26. GPU Temperatures27. Acoustics28. Power Draw: 1080p29. Power Draw: 1440p30. Performance per Watt: 1080p31. Performance per Watt: 1440p32. Total System Power Draw33. Closing Thoughts34. View All Pages

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.

Become a Patron!