The Arc Battlemage GPUs are finally climbing up with newer driver updates, and even though they still need more optimizations, they’re already doing the magic in several titles.
Intel Fixes CPU Overhead Issue in Multiple Titles Through Driver Updates; Arc B580 is Now Responding Well With Older CPUs
Arc B580 came out to be one of the most impressive budget GPUs at $249, but one of the reasons a lot of gamers refused to buy it was the CPU overhead problem. The Arc B580 was basically doing poorly when paired with older CPUs, and we aren’t talking about CPUs from 2015, but even as recent as the Zen 3, which were released roughly five years ago. While technically, these are also old, millions of gamers are still rocking these CPUs due to their impressive gaming performance that still holds up to the current expectations.
Nonetheless, the Arc B580 was doing quite poorly with these CPUs, and Intel did acknowledge this. In just a few months, Intel started delivering regular driver updates, eventually mitigating the issue in various titles, as recently demonstrated by Hardware Unboxed, where he re-reviewed the GPU. Previously, the performance regression was significant when the Arc B580 was paired with Ryzen 5600 in comparison with the AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, and this was due to the bottlenecks created by CPU overhead, which was keeping the Intel GPU way behind its competitors.
The new benchmarks revealed that it has been fixed to a great extent in some titles. For instance, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered showed a staggering regression when paired with Ryzen 5 5600 when compared to RX 9060 XT 8 GB. Even though both GPUs were held back due to the CPU choice, the performance impact on the Arc B580 was just too big. Starting with Intel Driver version 7028, which was released in August, the Arc B580 now trades blows with the RX 9060 XT 8 GB, delivering over 30% performance gains vs the 6000-driver branch.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty saw a similar fate, but it was more impressive as the Arc B580 didn’t show any regression compared to RX 9060 XT when paired with the Ryzen 5 2600. Dying Light: The Beast, Marvel Rivals, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, and Borderlands 4 are some more titles that saw some good improvements with Ryzen 5600. However, a lot of games still showed a huge CPU overhead problem with Ryzen 5 2600, but with Ryzen 5600, the problem isn’t common now.
Intel is continuously offering more optimizations with newer updates, and Arc B580 may no longer have that “driver” weakness. The GPU has already dropped to $249 on major retailers, and is the only 12 GB card at this price point, making it an ideal solution for modern gaming.
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