A capable budget GPU for cheap.

The Intel Arc B580 is a curious customer, arriving as the first GPU from our current generation, and being a return to form for Intel after its initial Arc Alchemist run a couple of years ago. This new variant was aimed squarely at the budget gamer, promising strong 1080p and even 1440p gaming performance plus 12GB of VRAM for a sub £300 price tag. We've seen this card drop as low as £200 momentarily in the past, although it hasn't been at that price for some time, sticking solidly at £250 or more for a brand new one.

If you're happy to delve into the world of Amazon Resale (or the Amazon Warehouse as it was one known), then there is the opportunity to bag a bargain. A 'Used - Very Good' version of the Acer Nitro B580 is down to £213 from the big online retailer. No further details are given on its condition, although a lot of the computing and tech items I've ordered from the warehouse (including monitors and other large items) have been as-new, just with damaged packaging or a missing manual. If there are any issues, then you can use Amazon's robust returns policy.

In Rich's review of the card, he called it "the fastest mainstream GPU", arguing that it provided an ideal antedote to the sub-£300 GPU market that had been choc-full of complaints from folks who wanted more than just 8GB of VRAM. More so than that though, the B580 largely offered the performance to back it up.

For instance, in Alan Wake 2 at high settings with low RT, at native 1080p, the B580 wipes the floor with both the 4060 and RX 7600, beating Nvidia's card by 29 percent and AMD's by 51 percent, respectively. Dying Light 2 maintained the same gap between B580 and RX 7600, although Nvidia closed the gap to 14 percent.

Rasterisation isn't necessarily as strong, but it's still worth noting the real price to performance that the B580 provides, not least against the RTX 4060 that has 8GB of VRAM and is more expensive. For instance, in Black Myth: Wukong, the 4060 pulls ahead by nine percent, although with RT disabled in Cyberpunk 2077, the B580 takes a 23 percent lead. In Forza Horizon 5, both cards deliver results in excess of 60fps at 1440p for virtually like-for-like performance - that feels like an Intel win.

As is seemingly always the case with Intel though, there are some caveats. Rich's testing revealed issues with Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales with stuttering, while the same shader compilation issues in Call of Duty Infinite Warfare still prevailed. There have also been numerous reports of a driver overhead issue with the B580 that causes performance to drop drastically if you pair it with the kind of older CPU that makes sense for a budget build, such as the Ryzen 5 5600, for instance. The impact of this seems to vary on a game-by-game basis, so it's worth delving further to see where you stand.

If you want to grab a capable budget gaming CPU for a song, this Acer Nitro OC B580 for just £213 from Amazon Resale is a bargain.