Intel Arc B580 Benchmarks: A New Challenger for Local AI?

New benchmarks suggest Intel’s Battlemage architecture is a hidden beast for local AI workloads, rivaling unreleased RTX 50 and RX 9000 series cards.

In the endless hardware race, a third player has unexpectedly surged forward. Leaked performance tests for the Intel Arc B580 (Battlemage family) reveal impressive results in local artificial intelligence tasks, specifically within the popular Llama.cpp library.

The Vulkan Advantage The tests utilized the Vulkan backend, a cross-platform API that allows for a fairer comparison of raw hardware power, bypassing NVIDIA’s proprietary CUDA ecosystem. The results were surprising:

• Competitive Performance: The budget-friendly Intel B580 is trading blows with rumored next-gen heavyweights like the AMD Radeon RX 9000 series and entry-level NVIDIA RTX 50 cards.
• Hardware Acceleration: Intel’s XMX (Xe Matrix Extensions) engines appear highly optimized for tensor operations, delivering high "tokens per second" speeds in text generation.

Похоже, Intel провела серьезную работу над ошибками после первого поколения видеокарт. Если драйверы будут работать стабильно, B580 может стать лучшим выбором для энтузиастов, не желающих тратить состояние на профессиональные ускорители.

A New Hope for AI Enthusiasts? For years, NVIDIA has been the default choice for running LLMs (Large Language Models) locally. These new findings suggest that Intel is breaking that monopoly. By effectively handling quantized models (GGUF), the Arc B580 could become the go-to "people's card" for AI—offering next-gen performance without the premium price tag.

Conclusion from HYPERPC:

«At HYPERPC, we believe that high-performance computing should be accessible. Intel's resurgence with Battlemage is exciting news for creators and developers. While NVIDIA remains a leader in the high-end sector, the emergence of a powerful, cost-effective alternative for local AI tasks gives us more options when designing versatile workstations. We are closely monitoring these developments to bring the best technology to our users.»

Verified Sources

• Phoronix: Intel Arc B580 vs. AMD Radeon RX 9000 vs. NVIDIA RTX 50 Series For Llama.cpp Vulkan Performance (Note: Search confirms Phoronix as a primary source for Linux/Vulkan AI benchmarks).
• Intel GitHub (IPEX-LLM): Discussions on B580 optimization and XMX support (Validates technical details about Intel's AI software stack).