ASRock Challenger Arc B570 GPU Review: Battlemage For Even Less
The prevailing narrative about Arc Battlemage, though, is that it is much more sensitive to CPU performance than GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA. Is that really the case? To find out, we tested five graphics cards on four different CPUs across three games: one DirectX 11 title, one DirectX 12 title with ray-tracing, and one Vulkan title. Let's see the results:
First up we have Final Fantasy XIV Online, a popular DirectX 11-based title. The pattern is very clear to see here. While AMD loses very little performance moving to the older platforms, and NVIDIA actually gains performance, all three of our Arc cards completely fall off. The worst results for Battlemage are on the Ryzen 7 3700X, where the Arc B570 and B580 both drop to less than 60% of their performance on the Core Ultra 9 processor.
These are 1% low values, by the way, so this represents the worst-case frame times. The averages didn't diverge quite so severely. It's an oversimplification, but it can be said that your CPU (and RAM, and storage) determines your minimum frame rates, while your GPU determines your maximums. A poor minimum (or 1% low) frame rate indicates a stuttery, unpleasant experience.
In Cyberpunk 2077, we really don't see the same pattern. Perhaps it's because of the sharply GPU-limited nature of this benchmark, but all of the results cluster within plus or minus five percent of the Core Ultra 9's performance. Once again, the NVIDIA GPU really prefers the AMD CPUs; did everyone think that the Core Ultra 9 285K was bad in games because it was tested with NVIDIA GPUs? Food for thought.
Finally, in Doom Eternal, we see a bit of a mixed bag. When looking at these results, it's important to keep in mind that our Doom Eternal benchmark is a manual benchmark, and so there's a significant degree of run-to-run variance involved. We do perform multiple runs per aggregate benchmark result, but we're still chalking up the unusual mismatch in performance changes across CPUs between the Arc B570 and B580 to run-to-run variance.
Meanwhile the Radeon card and especially the GeForce card both very strongly prefer the older CPUs, and Arc doesn't care much either way. The biggest drop-off is around 12% for the Arc B580 on the Ryzen 7 3700X, which is really about what we would expect from such an older CPU.
The Final Fantasy result clearly demonstrates that there is absolutely some truth to the idea that Arc is more sensitive than GeForce or Radeon to CPU performance. However, the other two results clearly illustrate that it's not all doom and gloom. If you're rocking something like a Ryzen 7 1700X or 10th-generation Intel chip, we'd generally recommend you to go ahead and upgrade that anyway rather than simply slapping down the latest GPU. Hopefully Intel can get the CPU sensitivity issues for Arc GPUs all fixed up in a future driver update.
Total System Power Consumption
Power consumption was perhaps the true Achilles' Heel of Intel's previous-gen Alchemist cards. People constantly talk about initial driver issues and game compatibility, but both of those have been largely solved problems for months now, at least. The real issue with Alchemist in 2025 is the power consumption. With that in mind, let's see how Arc B570 performs in terms of efficiency.
We checked, double-checked, and triple-checked this result and it's correct—the Arc B570 is usually faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, yet it draws barely any more power. That's crazy, considering that NVIDIA's GPU has a process technology advantage over Intel's new baby.
No doubt in part because of the slim and trim power consumption, ASRock's Challenger Arc B570 stays whisper quiet, even when the fans spin up. If your PC makes any other noise at all, you won't hear the GPU cooler.
No doubt in part because of the slim and trim power consumption, ASRock's Challenger Arc B570 stays whisper quiet, even when the fans spin up. If your PC makes any other noise at all, you won't hear the GPU cooler.
ASRock Challenger Arc B570: Our Verdict And Key Takeaways
When you hear about the Arc B580 at around $250, and then see the Arc B570 at $220, there's a certain trick your mind plays on you. That's a 12% reduction in price, but when you're thinking in terms of dollars, it's only $30 less. That isn't really a whole lot of money these days, at least for most people that are considering a graphics upgrade or new build.
For the price cut, you generally take a larger-than-12% performance hit. In some titles, the differential between the Arc B580 and Arc B570 is over 30%. That's a relatively large performance gulf when we're talking about a 12% price cut.
For the price cut, you generally take a larger-than-12% performance hit. In some titles, the differential between the Arc B580 and Arc B570 is over 30%. That's a relatively large performance gulf when we're talking about a 12% price cut.
In a vacuum, there's nothing to scoff at with the Arc B570, and aside from our one gripe in the intro about the excessive height of the cooler, the ASRock Challenger Arc B570 is a near perfect exemplar of the form. It's a little bit of a hard sell at $220, though, explicitly because the much better performing B580 with more VRAM is just $30 more. Maybe that's the goal, though. Maybe the point of the B570 is to upsell B580s? We don't think that's likely, because Intel and its partners can't keep B580s on the shelf.
The Arc B570 GPU is a perfectly capable graphics card for 1080p and some 1440p gaming. It's capable with AI workloads as well, and XeSS 2 with Frame Generation will surely find its way into more games sooner than later, improving the value of both B570 and B580 cards even further. If Intel had its partners knock roughly $20 off the price, this product would make a very compelling case for itself at $199. Perhaps that will be reality post-launch, but at $219, it's a little bit less exciting. Regardless, B570 is still a decent value, competitively, in its price band. Kudos to Intel for making new budget GPUs that are actually worth buying.
The Arc B570 GPU is a perfectly capable graphics card for 1080p and some 1440p gaming. It's capable with AI workloads as well, and XeSS 2 with Frame Generation will surely find its way into more games sooner than later, improving the value of both B570 and B580 cards even further. If Intel had its partners knock roughly $20 off the price, this product would make a very compelling case for itself at $199. Perhaps that will be reality post-launch, but at $219, it's a little bit less exciting. Regardless, B570 is still a decent value, competitively, in its price band. Kudos to Intel for making new budget GPUs that are actually worth buying.
