Not that long ago we took a long hard look at what the second generation Intel ARC “Battlemage” graphics processors had to offer and walked away very, very impressed. With its unique blend of aesthetics, performance, and above all else value the B580 quickly proved to be an excellent option for buyers sick and tired of being forced to spend more on their GPU than they do on their CPU. That said, while an asking price of $255 is indeed very palatable to most buyers, some builds are still a bit too rich for ye olde budget. Instead, a hard limit of $250 is about as much as the budget can stretch too. This is very frustrating as up until now hard price cap limited one’s choices to garbage, dumpster fires, dumpster fires filled with soiled baby diapers… or risking the budget on buying a ‘used’ (and probably abused) card. That however is where Intel’s even more value-orientated B570 enters the chat. To be specific it is where “board partners” like ASRock and their ASRock Challenger B570 10GB OC, and its @220 asking price, enter the fray… as value orientated buyers with a limited budget is pretty much a great definition of who the targeted demographic of this new card are.
On the surface, the idea of a $220 priced card being released in 2025 will throw up major red flags for some. These days that is less than the cost of their family going to see an IMAX movie. However, this is precisely the reason for the B500-series exists in the first place: to bring sanity back to a portion of the market. Yes. In order to undermine the B580 (and the rest of the mainstream options) Intel has indeed cut down the core (18 instead of 20 Xe cores), cut back on the RAM (10GB instead of 12GB), and sliced the memory bus back to an oddball 160bits (from 192-bit). That however is still bigger and better than the usual suspects who give you 6 to 8 GB of (typically slower) RAM on a 128bit bus, and use a core that is so crippled its hard to say it is even in the same generation as the 60/70/80/90 class options it hails from.
On its own this could be… potentially be a ‘good enough’ argument on why one should by a ‘good enough’ version of the BattleMage series. ASRock typically does not do ‘good enough’ and instead have built its reputation on subverting buyers expectations. This is why the ASRock Challenger B570 10GB OC comes replete with a cooling solution that uses multiple heat pipes. Multiple 100mm fans. Actually comes with a metal backplate. Even comes factory overclocked to further help the ‘smaller’ BattleMage 5-class card act more like its bigger brother the 580. To be precise, ASRock riced the B570 core up to a peppy 2600Mhz. When combined with the extremely low, especially by ClownWorld 2025 edition standards, the asking price makes for what appears to be one heck of a one-two combination.
Appearances however can be deceiving as “All that glistens is not gold”. Thus for most experienced builders, the question is simple: is this an All-Star that will help you get your game on, or it is just another failed experiment that will do nothing to counteract the pricing insanity of the PC video card marketplace. So without further preamble let’s find out if this is just another short-lived shooting star or a sign that Intel is laying the foundation for an actual GPU reformation.
