Intel heard your screams of anguish, PC gamers. Budget graphics cards that are actually worth your money have all but disappeared this pandemic/crypto/AI-crazed decade, with modern “budget” GPUs going for $300 or more, while simultaneously being gimped with substandard memory configurations that limit your gaming to 1080p resolution unless you make some serious visual sacrifices. No more. Today, Intel announced the $249 Arc B580 graphics card (launching December 13) and $219 Arc B570 (January 16), built using the company’s next-gen “Battlemage” GPU architecture. The Arc B580 not only comes with enough firepower to best Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4060 in raw frame rates, it has a 12GB memory system target-built for 1440p gaming – something the 8GB RTX 4060 sorely lacks despite costing more. Intel As if that wasn’t an appealing enough combination (did I mention this thing is $249?!), Intel is upping the ante with XeSS 2, a newer version of its AI super-resolution technology that adds Nvidia DLSS 3-like frame generation for even more performance, as well as Xe Low Latency (XeLL), a feature that can greatly reduce latency in supported games. Add it all up and Intel’s Arc B580 seems poised to really, truly shake things up for PC gamers on a budget – something we haven’t seen in years and years. If you’re still rocking an OG GTX 1060, take a serious look at this upgrade. Let’s dig in. Bonus! If you’re reading this the morning of the announcement, join our Full Nerd podcast LIVE at 1:30pm ET/10:30am PT today for an Arc B580, XeSS 2, and Battlemage deep dive with Intel Fellow Tom Petersen. Meet Battlemage and the Arc B580 Intel’s debut “Alchemist” Arc GPUs launched in late 2022, rife with all the bugs and issues you’d expect from the first generation of a product as complex as modern graphics cards. Intel diligently ironed those out over the subsequent months, delivering driver updates that supercharged performance and squashed bugs at a torrid pace. In a briefing with press, Intel Fellow Tom Petersen said a major force during Battlemage’s development was improving software efficiency, to be better able to unleash the full power of Intel’s hardware. But remember, it ran on first-gen hardware, too. Battlemage improves efficiency on that front, using tricks like transforming the vector engines from two slices into a single structure, supporting native SIMD16 instructions, and beefing up the capabilities of the Xe core’s ray tracing and XMX AI instructions to, yes, make everything run smoother and better than before. Battlemage’s hardware efficiency improvement are illustrated here, showing how a Fortnite frame runs on the new Arc B580 versus last-gen’s (more expensive) A750 — the time to render a frame dropped from 19ms to a silky smooth 13msintel I’ve included a bunch of technical slides above, so nerds can pick through the details. But here’s the upshot: The Arc B580 delivers 70 percent more performance per Xe core than last gen’s Arc A750, and 50 percent more performance per watt, per Intel. Cue Keanu Reeves: Whoa. That’s absolutely bonkers. You almost never see performance leaps that substantial from a single-generation advance anymore! Intel That’s at an architectural level; the slide above shows the specific hardware configurations found in the Intel B580 and B570. A couple of things stand out here, first and foremost the memory configuration. Nvidia and AMD’s current $300 gaming options come with just 8GB of VRAM, tied to a paltry 128-bit bus that all but forces you to play at 1080p resolution. The Arc B580 comes with an ample 12GB of fast GDDR6 memory over a wider 192-bit bus – so yes, this GPU is truly built for 1440p gaming, unlike its rivals. The Arc B570 cuts things down a bit to hit its $219 price tag but the same broad strokes apply. Also worth noting: Intel’s new GPUs feature a bog standard 8-pin power connector (though third-party models may add a second one to support Battlemage’s ample overclocking chops). No fumbling with fugly 12VHPWR connectors here. Intel’s homebrew Limited Edition reference GPUs will return for the B580 in a newer, smaller design with blow-through cooling. You’ll also be able to pick up third-party custom cards from the partners shown above, and the B570’s launch in January will be exclusive to custom boards, with no Limited Edition reference planned. Intel As part of the launch, Intel is also introducing a redesigned gaming app with advanced overclocking capabilities, including the ability to tweak voltage and frequency offsets. Intel Arc B580 performance details Now let’s dig into actual performance, using Intel’s supplied numbers. Intel says the $249 Arc B580 plays games an average of 25 percent faster than last generation’s higher-tier $279 Arc A770 across a test suite of 40 games. Compared to the competition, Intel says the Arc B580 runs an average of 10 percent faster than Nvidia’s RTX 4060 – though crucially, those numbers were taken at 1440p resolution rather than the 1080p resolution the overly nerfed RTX 4060 works best at. Intel Intel also made a point of stressing how the RTX 4060’s limited 8GB of RAM over a 128-bit bus can directly impact performance today. The slide above shows Forza Motorsport running at 1440p resolution. At standard High settings, the RTX 4060 actually holds a performance advantage. As you scale up the stressors, flipping on ray tracing and moving to Ultra settings, the advantage instantly flips, with the B580 taking a clear, substantial lead while the RTX 4060 hits the limits of what’s possible with its memory setup. Speaking of, Intel says most of the key technologies underlying ray tracing have been improved by 1.5x to 2x in Battlemage compared to the first-gen Arc “Alchemist” offerings. Considering that Intel’s debut Arc cards already went toe-to-toe with Nvidia’s vaunted RTX 40-series ray tracing, there could be a fierce battle brewing in realistic real-time lighting next year – which isn’t something I’d thought I’d say in the $250 segment before even flipping the calendar to 2025. If you’re still rocking a GTX 1060 or 1650 from back in the day, the Arc B580 would be a massive upgrade in both speed and advanced features like ray tracing. Raw hardware firepower alone is only part of the graphics equation these days, however. Nvidia’s RTX technology forced the power of AI upscaling and frame generation into consideration this decade – and Intel’s new software features are designed to supercharge frame rates and lower latency even further. Meet XeSS 2 and Xe Low Latency Intel’s XeSS technology debuted alongside the first-gen Arc cards, serving as an AI upscaling rival to Nvidia’s core DLSS technology. (These render frames at a lower resolution internally, then use AI to supersample the final result, leading to higher performance with little to no loss in visual quality.) But then Nvidia launched DLSS 3, a technology that injects AI-generated “interpolated” frames between every GPU-rendered frame, utterly turbocharging performance in many games and scenarios. XeSS 2 is Intel’s response to that. While DLSS 3 requires the use of a hardware Optical Flow Accelerator only present in RTX 40-series GPUs, Intel’s XeSS 2 uses AI and Arc’s XMX engines to do the work instead – meaning it’ll also work on previous-gen Arc cards, and the Xe-based integrated graphics found in Intel’s Lunar Lake laptops. Intel And as we see with DLSS 3, the performance improvements can be outstanding. Intel says that in its in-house F1 24 tests with the B580, activating XeSS 2 with supersampling and frame generation can improve performance by a whopping 2.8x to 3.9x, depending on the Quality setting used. While the game runs at 48fps at the chosen settings without XeSS 2 enabled, turning on XeSS 2’s Ultra quality lifts that all the way up to 186fps – a literal game changer. Intel Support for XeSS 2 is coming to the games shown above, with more to arrive in the coming months. First-gen XeSS hit 150 games to date, so the hope is that XeSS 2 (which uses different APIs for developers to hook into) ramps quickly as well. Injecting AI frames between tradition frames has a side effect though – it increases latency, or the reaction between your mouse click and the action occurring onscreen, because the interpolated AI frames can’t respond to your commands. Enter Intel’s Xe Low Latency feature. XeLL essentially cuts out a bunch of the ‘middleman’ rendering and logic queues that happen behind the scenes in a frame, letting your GPU render a frame much, much faster than typical. (Nvidia’s awesome Reflex technology works similarly.) Activating it drastically lowers latency. You can tangibly feel the improvement in games that don’t have frame generation active, but by enabling it alongside XeSS 2, it claws back the latency created by frame generation. You can witness the improvements possible in the slide below, which shows the performance of an F1 24 frame with a variety of XeSS features (supersampling, frame gen, XeLL) active. It really illustrates the need for a latency-reduction feature alongside frame generation. Intel Latency reduction is so critical to frame gen “feeling right” that Intel requires developers to include XeLL as part of the wider XeSS 2 package, following in Nvidia’s footsteps. As with DLSS 3 and Reflex, you may see the options presented separately in some games, while others will silently enable them together – it’s up to the developer. Battlemage brings the heat? Always take vendor numbers with a big punch of salt. We’ve seen vendor benchmark controversies over the years, including this year. Corporate marketing exists to sell stuff to you first and foremost. Hashtag: Wait for benchmarks et cetera et cetera. All that said, while Battlemage doesn’t push for the bleeding edge of performance, I’m wildly excited by what I see on paper here. Budget GPUs have been an absolute quagmire ever since the pandemic, with none of the current Nvidia or AMD offerings being very compelling. They feel like rip-offs. Intel Intel’s Arc B580 and B570 feel like genuine value offerings, finally giving gamers without deep pockets an enticing 1440p option that’s actually affordable – something we haven’t seen this decade despite 1440p gaming becoming the new norm. Delivering better-than-4060 performance and 12GB of VRAM for $250 is downright killer if Intel hits all its promises, especially paired with what looks to be a substantial increase to Arc’s already-good ray tracing performance. And with XeSS 2 and XeLL, Intel is keeping pace with Nvidia’s advanced features – assuming developers embrace it as wholeheartedly as they’ve done with first-gen XeSS. Add it all up and I’m excited for a truly mainstream GPU for the first time in a long time. The proof is in the pudding (again, wait for independent benchmarks!) but Intel seems to be brewing up something spicy indeed with Battlemage and the Arc A580. Read...

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At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Strong multicore CPU performance Excellent game performance for the price Attractive motion performance with 360Hz panel Lots of USB-A connectivity Cons Thick and heavy Short battery life Mediocre keyboard and small touchpad One USB-C port, no Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7 Our Verdict The “retro-inspired” Dell G15 Gaming Laptop packs a punch in games, but comes with plenty of trade-offs. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Dell G15 New Refurbished Retailer Price Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Dell G15 5530 15-inch – Core i7-13650HX – 16GB 1000GB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 QWERTY – English $1342.15 View Deal Price comparison from Backmarket Dell’s G-Series of gaming peripherals have evolved into a legitimate budget option over the past few years, and the Dell G2724D is currently our favorite budget gaming monitor. The laptops also have a strong focus on value, and the Dell G15 takes that to an extreme. Thick, ponderous, and undeniably quick, the G15 will appeal to gamers who want to wring every possible FPS from their budget.  Further reading: Best gaming laptops 2024: What to look for and highest-rated models Dell G15: Specs and features The Dell G15 I tested had an older Intel Core i7-13650HX processor. It’s a powerful chip for multithreaded workloads, however, with 14 cores and 20 threads. It’s a similar story with the GPU; the Nvidia RTX 4060 isn’t a heartstopper, but the version found in the Dell G15 has a hearty maximum graphics power of 140 watts. Model number: 5530 CPU: Intel Core i7-13650HX Memory: 16GB DDR5 Graphics/GPU: Nvidia RTX 4060 mobile NPU: None Display: 15.6-inch 16:9 360Hz 1080p IPS  Storage: 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 solid state storage Webcam: 720p webcam, single array microphone Connectivity: 1x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 with DisplayPort Alternate Mode, 3x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x Gigabit Ethernet (RJ45), 1x 3.5mm combo audio Networking: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 Biometrics: None  Battery capacity: 86 watt-hours Dimensions: 14.07 x 10.80 x 1.06 inches Weight: 6.19 pounds MSRP: $1,199.99 MSRP  Dell also shipped the G15 Gaming Laptop I reviewed with a 360Hz panel, which is an unusually high refresh rate for a budget laptop. This option is only available by customizing the laptop configuration and is currently out of stock. The model I tested rang up at about $1,200, but entry-level versions start at $700 (with an Intel Core i5 chip and RTX 4050). Shoppers looking for the best value should consider a pre-configured model. Going that route can land you an Intel Core i9-13900HX, RTX 4060, 165Hz 1080p display, and 32GB of RAM for $1,000. The Dell G15 Gaming Laptop is a laptop built for gaming and it performs that mission admirably. Dell G15: Design and build quality IDG / Matthew Smith Dell’s marketing department took a clever approach with the G15 gaming laptop. They describe it as retro, which is certainly an interesting way to frame it. What Dell means by “retro” is that the laptop looks like it could’ve been sold any time in the last 10 or even 20 years.  There are benefits to this approach. While the laptop is primarily constructed from matte black plastic, the thick, angular design feels classic. It also provides a good amount of space for internal cooling which, as I’ll highlight in a moment, helps the laptop achieve solid performance results.   However, the retro design contributes to the laptop’s bulk. At over an inch thick, and weighing just over six pounds, the G15 is on the heavier side. In practical terms, that makes the G15 more of a desktop replacement than a laptop you’d want to carry around daily—though I suppose you could make it work with a large, well-padded backpack.  While the Dell G15 looks retro, its build quality is modern. There’s minimal flex in the chassis, even when lifting the laptop from a corner or edge, and the display lid allows only slight flex when opening or closing. Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t a MacBook Pro. But it’s sturdy for a budget gaming laptop. Dell G15: Keyboard, trackpad IDG / Matthew Smith The Dell G15 gaming laptop’s size accommodates a keyboard with a numpad, but it doesn’t fully utilize the available space. While the numpad keys are nearly as large as the main alphanumeric keys, other keys feel undersized. The left-side Tab, Caps Lock, and Shift keys get the worst of it. Key travel is decent, but the typing feel is vague and springy. It’s usable but doesn’t stand out from the crowd. Keyboard backlighting is included but available in just one color: orange. I like the shade of orange, as it reinforces the laptop’s retro vibe. However, some competitors beat the Dell G15 by providing single-zone or multiple-zone color customization: the Gigabyte G6X and Acer Nitro 14 are two examples.   The Dell G15’s touchpad is a major drawback. At just 4 inches wide and slightly over 2 inches deep, it’s extremely small for a laptop sold in 2024. Blame the large speaker grille above the keyboard, which pushes the keyboard down and limits touchpad space. Dell seems to intend the laptop to be used with an external mouse—and perhaps keyboard—which reinforces its role as a desktop replacement laptop. Dell G15: Display, audio IDG / Matthew Smith Entry-level configurations of the Dell G15 Gaming Laptop have basic 120Hz 1080p IPS display, but the unit I reviewed had an upgraded 360Hz 1080p IPS panel with NVIDIA G-Sync support.  A 360Hz refresh rate is overkill for a laptop in this price range (most games won’t achieve frame rates high enough to fully utilize it), though it can deliver smooth motion in older e-sports titles like League of Legends. For most gamers, however, I recommend Dell’s middle option: a 1080p 165Hz G-Sync display that offers a better balance of performance and value. Refresh rate aside, the display is otherwise average. 1920×1080 resolution looks sharp on the 15.6-inch screen but doesn’t stand out compared to higher-resolution panels. It’s an IPS display, too, which lacks the contrast and vibrance of OLED. Still, it performs well in bright, colorful games like Overwatch, League of Legends, and Valorant—and OLED isn’t typically an option at this price point.  The massive speaker grill above the keyboard hints at great audio performance, but the audio system doesn’t live up to that promise. Volume is high at maximum, but the speakers lack bass and begin to sound harsh and muddy as the action heats up. They’re ok for games that lean less on audio presentation, like Cities: Skylines II, but you’ll want headphones for more immersive titles.  Dell G15: Webcam, microphone, biometrics The Dell G15 Gaming Laptop cuts corners with its webcam and microphone. It has a simple 720p webcam and a single-array microphone. Video quality is rather soft, and the microphone picks up spoken audio with a hollow, compressed sound. It’s passable for video calls on Zoom, I guess, but most modern laptops offer better video and audio recording.  Biometrics aren’t included, either. You’ll be logging in to the Dell G15 with a password or PIN.  Dell G15: Connectivity IDG / Matthew Smith The Dell G15 Gaming Laptop’s connectivity mirrors its retro design. It features three USB-A 3.1 ports, one USB-C port that supports DisplayPort Alternate Mode (but lacks power delivery), HDMI 2.1, Gigabit Ethernet, and a 3.5mm audio jack.  If you rely on USB-A peripherals or prefer wired Ethernet, this configuration is solid. However, if you favor USB-C, the laptop is less appealing, especially since the USB-C port only supports USB 3.2 Gen 2, falling short of newer USB 4.0 and Thunderbolt standards for data rates. Wireless connectivity also lags. The laptop supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, which are serviceable but outdated, with Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 now available. While Wi-Fi 6 is still sufficient for most users and may match your current router’s capabilities, its limitations could become more noticeable over time as faster standards become more widely adopted.  Dell G15: Performance The Dell Inspiron G15 Gaming Laptop sticks with Intel’s older 13th-Gen Core processors. Entry-level configurations have the Core i5-13450HX, while top-tier variants have the Core i9-13900HX. However, the model I reviewed landed in the middle with Intel’s Core i7-13650HX (which has 14 cores and 20 threads). It was supported by 16GB of memory and a 1TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 solid state drive.  IDG / Matthew Smith First up is PCMark 10, a general system benchmark that requires a decent CPU and acceptable GPU to reach its best results. The Dell G15 has both, so it achieved a respectable score of 7,337. That’s in line with the competition; not much better and not much worse.  That said, 7,337 is quite a good score for a laptop overall and it indicates the Dell G15 delivers a lot of performance for the price.  IDG / Matthew Smith Next up is Cinebench R23, a heavily multithreaded benchmark with a modest duration. Here the Dell G15 posted another respectable score of 16,913. That’s weaker than the Gigabyte G6X, which had the same processor and is sold at a similar price.  On the other hand, however, the Dell G15 easily defeated price-competitive laptops with weaker processors, like the HP Victus 15 with an Intel Core i7-12650H. IDG / Matthew Smith Handbrake is a long duration, heavily multithread benchmark that involves real-world encoding of a feature length film. The Dell G15 handles the task admirably, as it produced the best score among this competitive set. That suggests the laptop’s large power brick and thick chassis can sustain its performance over longer workloads. While the Intel Core i7-13650HX delivers good processor performance for the price, gamers will be more interested in the Nvidia RTX 4060 mobile. Though it sits low in Nvidia’s product stack, the configuration used by Dell’s G15 can tap into a maximum graphics power of up to 140 watts. Because of that, the Dell G15 can deliver performance similar to some RTX 4070 laptops.  IDG / Matthew Smith 3DMark puts the Dell G15 off to a great start with a score of 10,579. That’s the highest from this competitive set, and it even defeats the Nvidia RTX 4070-powered MSI Stealth 16 AI. The MSI is a thinner laptop, to be fair—but it goes to show how much of a difference exists between the quickest and slowest iterations of any given Nvidia RTX mobile graphics hardware. IDG / Matthew Smith It’s a similar story in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, an older 3D title that’s not too demanding on modern hardware. The Gigabyte G6X, which also had an Nvidia RTX 4060, was able to tie the Dell G15. However, Dell’s performance otherwise leads the competition. IDG / Matthew Smith Metro Exodus gives the MSI Stealth 16 AI a chance to catch up, but the Dell G15 is once again a leader in this arena. A result of 42 frames per second might seem low, but the Extreme preset is notoriously demanding in this title. This shows the Dell G15 can handle some very visually demanding titles so long as you keep your framerate target at 30 FPS or better. I finished things off with Cyberpunk 2077. The Dell G15 averaged 75 frames per second at 1080p resolution, Ultra detail, and with DLSS/FSR/XeSS turned off. That’s a highly playable result and again trades blows with the MSI Stealth 16 AI, which averaged 73 FPS.  Increasing Cyberpunk 2077’s settings to the Overdrive Ray-Traced preset, however, tanked the Dell G15’s performance to just 20 FPS. That’s quite a bit lower than the MSI Stealth 16 AI, which averaged 32 FPS. The Dell G15 does have its limits, and raytracing finds them.  Still, the Dell G15 Gaming Laptop is an impressive performer for the price. And the model I tested isn’t even the best value: if you ditch the 360Hz display for a 165Hz panel, you can upgrade the processor to an Intel Core i9-13900HX and spend $200 less. Dell G15: Battery life Dell stuff’s a sizeable 86 watt-hour battery into the G15 Gaming Laptop. It has its work cut out for it, however. The laptop has a powerful CPU and GPU, but lacks switchable graphics, which means the power-hungry GPU is always on tap. IDG / Matthew Smith The results are predictable. The Dell G15 fell short of reaching five hours in our standard battery test, which loops a 4K file of the short film Tears of Steel. That’s not unusual for a gaming laptop, but it’s not great, and it suggests the laptop will struggle to last more than a few hours on charge. My real-world use certainly reflected that reality. Spending a couple hours writing at a coffee shop caused the battery to nose-dive by 40 percent. I expect that most people will see about four to five hours even in basic productivity and web browsing tasks. Short battery life means you’ll feel the need to pack the power adapter—and it’s huge. The 330-watt adapter weighs several pounds and measures over an inch thick. Carrying both the laptop and adapter will add noticeable heft to even a large, well-padded backpack.  Dell G15: Conclusion The Dell G15 Gaming Laptop is a laptop built for gaming and it performs that mission admirably. It has enough GPU grunt to play demanding modern games, like Cyberpunk 2077, above 30 FPS at medium or high detail settings. Older titles, meanwhile, will easily exceed 60 FPS. However, the Dell G15’s laser focus on this goal makes it a bad fit for other tasks. It’s thick, heavy, and suffers short battery life. The display is crisp in motion but otherwise mediocre, the keyboard is so-so, and the touchpad is small. Wi-Fi connectivity is stuck on Wi-Fi 6 and there’s only one USB-C port. These downsides make it harder to recommend the Dell G15. Still, gamers who want a desktop replacement laptop with solid bang for the buck should consider it. What the G15 lacks in versatility, it makes up for in performance. Read...

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