ASRock Challenger Arc B570 GPU Review: Battlemage For Even Less
Just as with the Intel Arc B580 that we reviewed last month, we've got no less than twenty game tests all lined up for you. Full disclosure: not all of the benchmark data in this review is completely fresh. We did re-use some results where we had no reason to expect that they might have changed. However, there is lots of fresh data as you'll see. We're going to start off the gaming benchmarks with an old standby: 3DMark.
UL 3DMark Synthetic Gaming Benchmarks
3DMark has been around longer than some people in our audience have been alive. From the original 3DMark release in 1999 to the latest benchmarks now, the change in visual quality is nothing short of astonishing. First, we're going to take a look at the latest benchmark added to 3DMark, known as Steel Nomad.
Steel Nomad is an absolutely punishing 4K raster benchmark, and as a result this test can feel a little bit like a memory bandwidth benchmark. It's not just that, though. If it were, the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti would fall well behind, and it doesn't. The ASRock Challenger Arc B570 does well enough here, yet the gap between the B580 and B570 is surprisingly large. Spoilers: that becomes a theme.
3DMark Speed Way is a very heavy ray-tracing test. With that in mind, you might be surprised to see the Arc B580 falling behind the Radeon RX 7700 XT and the Arc B570 falling to the bottom of the chart. These results are consistent, but they don't exactly line up withour expectations and we suspect there may be driver work to be done here.
Finally, in the venerable Time Spy test, we see the Arc B570 put up a respectable performance, given its price point. The CPU score is nearly identical to the B580's, so it's really the slashed-by-25% graphics score that is hurting the overall ranking here. It's interesting to see driver efficiency in DirectX 12 titles laid out this way; Battlemage falls behind only the NVIDIA cards in the CPU scores.
Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail Benchmarks
First up we have a certified weeaboo classic: Final Fantasy XIV. We are of course using the latest version of the game's stand-alone benchmark, which adds long-overdue physical-based rendering to the game's rendering pipeline, drastically improving the appearance of surfaces and materials.
Final Fantasy XIV is our first real game test, and it continues the pattern of the Arc B570 being considerably behind the Arc B580. This is still a solid result, as the B570 nestles between the last-gen A770 and A750 while consuming a fraction of the power, and it's not far behind the much more expensive GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, either.
Warframe 1999 Gaming Benchmarks
Warframe 1999 is a recent major update to the mega-popular live service third-person shooter. The new content is incredibly demanding compared to the rest of the game, and each mission type in the new area starts exactly the same way every time, so it makes a perfect place to test performance in Warframe.
This entire chart is fresh data. That's because our Warframe account has progressed into the Warframe 1999 story and no longer has access to the demo level. Instead, we used the Victory Plaza assassination mission, which is actually slightly heavier than the demo level was. These settings are really too tough for most of our GPUs, but the Arc B570 held its own admirably here.
Palworld Benchmarks
Palworld may not be as popular as it once was, but the game still pulls tens of thousands of players every single day, so we figure it's worth a look. This game makes use of Unreal Engine 5, but doesn't take advantage of any of its advanced rendering features, partially because it's still on DirectX 11.
There's a fair argument to be made that the Arc B580 should have been the B730 or similar. There's a clear division between the B580, the RTX 4060 Ti, and the RX 7700 XT in Palworld, and the B570 falls on the slower side of that line. Still, a capable performance for the little GPU that could considering its size and the workload.
Zenless Zone Zero Benchmarks
Released this year on Unity engine by Chinese developer Hoyoverse—better known for the "Honkai" and "Genshin" properties—Zenless Zone Zero is a third-person gacha action title with highly stylized visuals in a unique and striking style. The game is gorgeous despite that it's strictly PlayStation 4 in terms of technology. We tested it in full native 4K with no scaling.
The Arc Battlemage architecture handles the Unity engine rather well. The B570 gives up its best performance yet in Zenless Zone Zero, running just barely behind the much larger and thirstier Radeon RX 7700 XT.
Retro FPS Selaco Benchmarks
Hotly-anticipated for a long time before it finally released early this year, Selaco is a retro-styled first-person shooter built on an advanced version of the original DOOM engine. It features high-detail sprites, particle effects, advanced movement physics, and many voxel objects. It's an awesome, fast-paced shooter that you're probably missing out on.
This is another chart that's entirely new data. After we reported a crash in Selaco to Intel, the Arc driver team seems to have set to work, not only fixing the crash bug but also doing some game-specific optimizations. As a result, Arc is now by far the best way to play this retro FPS. These optimizations extend to some degree to the GZDoom engine in general, so games like Hedon: Bloodrite and modpacks like Eviternity II should now run very well on Arc GPUs. That's particularly great news for Intel's integrated parts.
Doom Eternal Benchmarks
Of course, if we're talking about "Vulkan-powered FPS games," it has to be Doom, right? Doom Eternal is hardly a new game anymore, having released in 2020, but it's still a blast to play, especially with the unlimited ammo cheat. Id Software's engine is characteristically well-optimized, so we tested this game in 4K mode with a 67% render scale, equivalent to "Quality" mode in DLSS, FSR, or XeSS.
Some of our graphics cards struggle here due to insufficient video memory. That's not a problem for the Arc B570, though, as its 10GB is just enough to allow it to handle the "Ultra Nightmare" settings we tested with. It turns in a great performance in Doom Eternal.
Baldur's Gate 3 RPG Benchmarks
The long-awaited sequel to the duology of classic Bioware Dungeons & Dragons CRPGs was itself a mega-hit, cementing it as a modern-day classic. It's really more of a CPU benchmark than a GPU benchmark, but we went ahead and tested this game on the Arc B580 anyway using a save game early in the title's third act after arriving in the city of Baldur's Gate proper.
Some new data here; the aforementioned Vulkan optimizations to the latest Arc driver seem to have done the brand some favors in Baldur's Gate 3 as well. As a result, we don't see a lot of movement in the rankings, but the 1% lows for many of the Arc GPus are sharply improved, and the B570 slots in just above the A750 once more.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Benchmarks
A brand-new release from MachineGames, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a first-person action game with a fresh story for the whip-slinging adventurer. Harrison Ford is nowhere to be seen, but we do get the talented Troy Baker doing a reasonable facsimile of a young Ford's voice.
Very interesting performance characteristics here. Whatever Intel did to its Vulkan driver in the most recent driver update had a wonderful effect in this game — for Alchemist. The Arc A770 becomes our third-fastest GPU in this game, an impressive result to be sure. However, both B580 and B570 ride low, and with very similar performance. What's up?
Well, what's up is that there's some sort of weird bug in either the game or the driver that causes unusually high CPU render times, only on Battlemage GPUs. This same thing doesn't happen to Alchemist cards, nor does it affect NVIDIA or AMD GPUs, so it seems likely to be a Battlemage-specific driver bug. Either way, it means that Arc B-series currently isn't the best way to play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle—at least, on Intel CPUs.
The majority of the games coming out for PCs these days employ Microsoft's DirectX 12 API, and likewise the majority of the games we tested. Head to the next page to see those benchmarks next...
Well, what's up is that there's some sort of weird bug in either the game or the driver that causes unusually high CPU render times, only on Battlemage GPUs. This same thing doesn't happen to Alchemist cards, nor does it affect NVIDIA or AMD GPUs, so it seems likely to be a Battlemage-specific driver bug. Either way, it means that Arc B-series currently isn't the best way to play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle—at least, on Intel CPUs.
The majority of the games coming out for PCs these days employ Microsoft's DirectX 12 API, and likewise the majority of the games we tested. Head to the next page to see those benchmarks next...
