This is interesting to me.
Intel B580 beats RTX 2080 Super. (At least in these games tested.)



One generation older than the 3080.
But that's not an entry level card. It launched for $700.

To be fair the 2000 series was also it's first gen for RT and as far as I've seen, it hasn't really performed better over the yrs with the new technology either. Seeing anything surpass that series is always going to be a good thing, but I'd love to see Intel targeting more midrange from the 3000/4000 series, so that we know they could potentially snipe Nvidia's 5000 mid range series (which is personally what I'm hoping for, since Nvidia kicked me out of the 80-line bracket ever since the 3000 series showed up). 

All Intel has to do is simply keep at it, instead of doing what AMD does and chug for a bit, rest, slip up, rinse and repeat.

What's interesting is how are things lining up for Intel's new GPU. See when Nvidia launches the RTX 5000 series next month, they are only going to launch the 5090 and 5080. Then in the following months, they are going to launch 5070 Ti, 5070 and etc. So by the time Nvidia gets down to the $300sh price bracket with 5000 series, it will be 6 months to a year at least of when Intel won't have a new generation competition from Nvidia.

With Radeon, I think it will be similar but quicker response. I highly doubt they will be launching the B580 competitor from Radeon so soon when it comes to RDNA 4. I think Radeon will launch what is essentially a 70 class competitor to a 60 Ti class competitor. Then 4-6 months later, launch a competitor to B580s class.

So what it will look like in the coming months in terms of GPU launch is:

High end:
5090
5080
Mid range:
8800XT
8700XT
Low end:
B580
B570

Basically no direct competition from any manufacturer in terms of new gen gpu launch until later in the year. But of course keep in mind that both Nvidia/AMD can discount their current generation to compete against Intel's B580 if they want to.

Yeah, it irks me that they launch their models backwards.
If you have a 3090, you're good. That is not the area that really needs improvement.
There are tiers that struggle to even play games competently (stable 60+ fps) at 1080p or 1440p.

The way things have shaped up over the last couple of generations, it seems intentional to treat those as an afterthought.
It's at the point where the low end cards effectively no longer exist if you want to play games competently for a reasobable price.
People are forced to pay a lot, no matter what tier they chose. And the more expensive the low end cards get, the higher of a price they can justfy for the mid to high end cards.

Intel are turning back the clock on that today. And I hope it pays off for them.

The funny thing is that not only is the B580 slightly faster at native resolution, but it will have a bigger advantage as time moves on when more devs add support for Intel's frame generation and newer upscaling tools.

But well, that's what 6 years of advancement should bring to us. And given that it has apparently run out of stock, at least in the US, it looks like consumers are as thrilled by this new card as is the media.

As for Nvidia and AMD, I can see Nvidia not bothering to change their plans, they can be to cocky from time to time, but given that AMD has publicly stated that they're focused on gaining marketshare, they need to speed up the release of their 8600 cards if they're really commited to that plan.

Any news on if we're going to see super model rebrands?, or do you think Nvidia will stick to a few Ti variants to stave shave off the top like usual?. 

I'm hoping they do supers, because I've noticed that over time, thanks to their meddling with numbers on each line of an entire series, they also ended up mixing some supers in there, which over time, heavily dilutes their entire generation.

The more Nvidia dilutes their entire gens each time, the more confusing it becomes for consumers, and those making comparisons are obviously going to point us to 1-3 clear winners, which leaves other variants on the line as redundant, which would also give the competition better leeway into price+Perf ratios.

If Nvidia doesn't this gen and just has a few Ti's per line, then it'll make it a little bit tough for Intel and tougher for AMD (considering how they said this gen they won't be targeting high end, which leaves them to fight not only Nvidia, but also Intel in that market) to compete against Ti and non Ti models. You ideally want your competitor to either outright trip out the gate, or confuse their consumers to take a quick advantage.

Right now Nvidia has near complete mindshare, but that doesn't mean they can secure wins forever. The more they confuse with the more choices they provide (which will happen, we've not got the capacity/likeness to want more choices than above a certain threshold, we're just built like that mentally), the easier it could be for competitors to gain shreds of mindshare over time. 

It irks me as well, but it makes sense from a business perspective, because launching your halo products first gets the type of consumers who want cutting edge as it comes off the press (like Apple fans who want the latest and greatest), and where price isn't an issue for them (which Nvidia has slowly been taking full advantage of these past few gens, as their prices have steadily been on the rise).

From another perspective, launching your strongest first means you can judge anything that comes after accordingly, based on the metric data of benches that were run on those two models, and then compared the ones released later that sit below them.

I think they will do a "Super" refresh but really Nvidia is more so about getting bottlenecked by vram than performance/features. The 5070 Ti is supposed to come with 16GB of vram. If the price is reasonable, then I'd snag that or if they discount the 4070 Ti Super which also has 16GB of vram by like $150-$200 to get rid of stock, I'd snag that too. What I wouldn't do is buy a 5070 12GB over a 4070 Ti Super 16GB even if the 5070 is faster.

And yea, Ryzen has proven very well that mindshare won't be a thing forever in the cpu space by consumers. If Nvidia is seen as greedy and lacking in innovation while Intel or AMD is seen as the bang per buck with a lot of innovation, the market share will turn in their favor. With Radeon, yea they are cheaper but they lack the innovation that Nvidia brings. So they aren't seen as the Nvidia but cheaper. They are seen has the "Radeon is cheap because they lack Nvidia's innovations." Nvidia has Ai upscaling? Here's FSR that almost every reviewer calls garbage. Nvidia has Ray Tracing? Here's our attempt that is so pathetic that a B580 can beat a 7700XT in Cyberpunk. Here's Anti-lag 2 that gets all of our users banned so we needed to disable that feature until we got out shat together after damaging our brand image some more. Etc.

Where as Intel is trying to be different. They are trying to do what Ryzen did many years ago in the GPU space. For $250, they are giving you the same types of innovation that Nvidia is charging an arm and a leg for. It's not perfect but boy XeSS, RT performance and etc are very close. Their biggest weakness really is driver issues but as you can see with reviewer reactions, they are in a lot better place than before. Radeon should have done what Intel is doing many years ago.

As if the B580 wasn't already a compelling enough deal in price/performance, it also comes included with a voucher for a digital copy of Assassins Creed Shadows.
At least with this retailer in Sweden.

A brand new game included (combat looked pretty good in the latest trailer) for such an affordable card is pretty wild.
(And this is for the expected MSRP here. The 3060 8GB is $40 more, in the same store.)
Is this campaign a thing in USA as well?

It's sold out physically, but has 44 copies remaining in their webstore. So that should be sold out soon as well.

Not a bad deal, tho I'm not sure if AC Shadows is the best game to bundle with your cards given all the drama around it. At least it doesn't seem to increase the price of the card more than the usual nonsense of US to any other currency conversion we usually see. I've seen the cards from AsRock and Sparkly for around 310€.

By the way, I've seen mentioned in some places that the B580 was around 400€ here in Europe, matching the price of the 7700XT. Does anyone know where that comes from? Because it's weird and doesn't seem to match what I've seen.