Intel’s next-gen Arc B580 spotted, backing up rumors of a December launch for Battlemage GPUs

New budget GPU champ is now imminent?

· TechRadar

News By Darren Allan published 19 November 2024

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
  • Leak suggests the box for Arc B580 is being readied
  • This comes on top of rumors that Intel will launch Battlemage next month
  • We can hope for a true budget 1080p champ in those 2nd-gen Arc GPUs

Rumors around Intel’s next-gen Battlemage desktop GPUs are ramping up, with the latest being a sighting of the Arc B580 graphics card – or at least a hint that the packaging is being readied.

Tom’s Hardware noticed the appearance of a shipping manifest, presented in a post on X, seemingly for the box of the Battlemage (BMG) B580 GPU.

Naturally, take this with some seasoning – plus the leaker in question is not one we’ve heard of before – but the packaging for the next-gen Arc graphics cards being readied (since September, apparently) falls in line with recent spinning from the rumor mill.

That includes speculation from a couple of days ago that showed a leaked teaser, showing Intel has a Battlemage announcement for December, which follows a rumor from earlier this month suggesting the exact same thing.

So, at least in theory, the revelation of these new 2nd-gen Arc GPUs is almost upon us.

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

Analysis: Battling at the lower-end of the GPU market

An imminent reveal makes sense in terms of Intel wanting to get in ahead with its Battlemage GPU launch, given that both AMD and Nvidia are at this point strongly rumored to be about to reveal their respective next-gen ranges of graphics cards – RDNA 4 and Blackwell – at CES 2025.

Previous rumors had suggested an early 2025 launch for Battlemage, but perhaps Intel fears its 2nd-gen Arc graphics cards might get lost in the hype battle between RDNA 4 and RTX 5000 GPUs if it waits that long – drowned out by the noise made around those rival GPUs, even if they aren't direct rivals for Intel – so Team Blue has stepped up its plans.

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