ASRock Challenger Arc A580 Review: Budget 1080P Gaming Powered By Intel
At this point, we have a pretty fair picture of how these cards perform in games. However, power draw is another critical metric to consider. A GPU with high power draw means both extra heat in your case and more power pulled from the wall. That, in turn, means a higher power bill, making a budget GPU less attractive over time. We probably don't have to tell you how this story ends, but we will anyway:
The DG2-512 GPU on which the Arc A580 and Arc A750 are based is a very large chip with a lot of compute resources. Unfortunately, it just doesn't perform the way you would expect of such a large GPU. The fair price to performance ratio of the Arc GPUs is a little strained due to their high power draw, especially at idle. The difference isn't egregious at load, but your GPU is going to be idle most of the time.
We didn't test thermals exhaustively, but if you're concerned, don't be. As we mentioned on the first page, the huge cooler on the ASRock Challenger Arc A580 could keep an even bigger GPU frosty, so it handles the DG2-512 just fine. We didn't observe temperatures above 77°C in our testing, and that's with the default fan curve that is quite conservative. If you wanted to, you could crank up the fan speed and overclock this card, but all you have to do is look at the Arc A750 results to know that's probably not the best use of your time.
ASRock Challenger Arc A580 Graphics Card Conclusions
The ASRock Challenger Arc A580 has somewhat of an identity crisis. Speaking about this card, specifically, the cooler is unnecessarily large, and the dual 8-pin power requirement feels excessive in the face of the actual power draw—not that the power draw is particularly low, because it's actually quite high for this performance class, as we just discussed above.That's not to say that all of the negatives are ASRock's fault, though. Certain Intel-specific issues remain, largely presenting as inconsistent frametimes in some titles. It's not common, but it's more than competing products. Intel has done phenomenal work on its drivers, but it's likely that some of these issues are down to architecture, and can't be improved much at this point. Intel is also likely to slow the pace of Xe-HPG driver updates when Battlemage releases later this year.
Furthermore, there's the value proposition. While this card is attractively-priced, just $40-60 more will get you an Arc A750 or Radeon RX 6650 XT, both of which are considerably more potent. When we're talking about just $160, "another $40-60" is a significant chunk of change, but from another perspective, it's just a few McDonald's meals these days.
Find The ASRock Challenger Arc A580 @ Amazon
With all of that said, we think the ASRock Challenger Arc A580 is a good product. The purpose of the Arc A580 is to serve as an affordable graphics card for gaming and productivity, and for that purpose, it passes muster. During our testing, we didn't encounter any game-breaking issues with any titles we tested, and that goes beyond the games we benchmarked. Phantasy Star, Hogwarts Legacy, Warframe, Gunhead, Shantae, Selaco, and more were all completely fine on the Arc A580.
If an Arc A580, including the ASRock Challenger Arc A580, is the GPU you have, or the GPU you can get, then that's just fine. As we discussed on the previous page, Intel recently got ReBar support working in Vulkan titles, and that resolves the last major performance pain point across a variety of games. Arc actually punches well above its weight class in Doom Eternal and Counter-Strike 2 now.
At the end of the day, all the first-generation Arc products really had to be was competitive, and at this point, that's what they are. This card may not be our first recommendation for an entry-level GPU, but most mainstream gamers would be served well by the ASRock Challenger Arc A580.
