Intel Arc A580 Spied In Benchmark Debut Far Outscoring RTX 3050 With Vulkan API
When Intel introduced its Arc Alchemist graphics cards, the company explained that it would be using the same 3-5-7 nomenclature that it uses on its CPUs for Arc's performance tiers. We've seen the A380, of course, and we've also seen the A750 and A770. There's been nary a word of the 500-series Arc parts, though—at least, until now.
The benchmark was run by user "games.repo1", and it achieved a score of 9300 on the "Min_1080p" preset using the Vulkan API. That correlates to an average framerate of 94 FPS; the score puts it well ahead of usual scores for the RTX 3050, and slightly behind the Radeon RX 580 and GeForce RTX 3060. However, it's worth noting that at these settings, this benchmark is rather variable and also heavily CPU-limited.
So, while that's not a particularly-encouraging set of results—even the A380 can nip at the heels of the RTX 3060 in some games—there are so many factors at play here it's impossible to really draw any conclusions. Never mind that this is just one benchmark known to have unusual performance characteristics, as we noted above.
It's still nice to see that the A580 exists and is up and running, anyway. Hopefully Intel can get it to market soon, although it bears mentioning that AMD and NVIDIA are both expected to launch with high-end products this year. As a result, Alchemist won't be threatened directly by next-gen products in the entry-level market, but the new products could push the prices of current-generation parts toward the floor.
