It's been over a year since Intel released its Arc A-series graphics cards. When Intel made its announcement, there were to be five cards, the A770, A750, A580, A380, and A310. The 700-series and 300-series cards have been available either as add-in cards or included in OEM systems for a year or more, but the A580 has been notably absent. Until now.
The Arc A580 is about to go on sale, and the ever-vigilant @momomo_us (via Videocardz), spotted the ASRock Arc A580 Challenger. According to a listing at Austrian-based Geizhals, the card features 3,072 shader units, a 2,000MHz clock speed and 8GB of 16Gbps GDDR6 memory with a 256-bit bus. The picture of the card reveals twin 8-pin power connectors, meaning its power efficiency probably won't be all that good for a card in its class.
The inclusion of 3,072 shader cores (24 Xe-cores to use Intel's parlance) indicates the A580 uses the DG2-512 GPU—the same as the one found in the A750 and A770, albeit with a quarter of its shading units disabled. It's big GPU for an entry-level card, with a die area of 406mm². Though it does mean it will perform much closer to the A750 than it will the A380, which comes with only 8 Xe-cores giving it 1,024 shader units.
The Geizhals spec rundown shows the card will have a PCIe 4.0 x16 interface, 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 2.0, and it'll come with AV1 encode and decode support. ASRock's card looks to be quite chunky, coming with a twin-fan triple slot cooler.
Videocardz also spotted a Sparkle A580 Orc, which features a not-unattractive blue shroud. It has what looks to be a dual-slot cooler, and it's visibly more compact than the ASRock Challenger.
The success or failure of the A580 will come down to its price. Given the A750 has touched $200 in the past, the A580 will obviously need to come in under that, and probably by some margin.
Intel deserves credit for the work it's been putting into its driver performance, features and stability. Though individual game performance remains a bit of a mixed bag, Arc drivers really have come a long way over the last 12 months.
They've become a lot more interesting given the value for money they offer. If the A580 is within range of the likes of the Radeon RX 6600 and maybe the RTX 3060 in some games, the A580 will surely find its way into more than a few rigs. But only if it's priced aggressively.
Official news on the A580 hasn't been forthcoming, so if the launch of the A580 is imminent, it will be a low-key one.
