A few days ago, Intel lifted the veil on its Big Battlemage range, but not in the way that players were necessarily hoping for. In fact, the founder has positioned its Arc Pro B70 and B65 in the professional segment. For the moment, no announcement has confirmed the arrival of the famous Arc B770, long mentioned as the gaming version of this new generation. Clearly, Big Battlemage is starting its career on the workstation side but at the heart of our Gaming PCs.
However, this situation does not prevent hardware enthusiasts from trying the video game adventure. The first tests show that the Arc Pro B70 can fortunately go well beyond simple professional use, in particular because it uses the same software stack as Intel’s gaming GPUs. So the good news is there.
Arc Pro B70, gaming performance increases by 45%
As a result, these two Arc Pro B series graphics cards are compatible with Arc Consumer gaming graphics drivers, in addition to professional drivers updated by Intel. According to published tests, the Arc Pro B70 is positioned well above the Arc Pro B60 in gaming. Across six benchmarks, the card would be on average 5% faster, both in terms of average framerate and 1% low performance. The gap was observed on several demanding titles, among which we find
- Monster Hunter Wilds,
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider,
- et Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty,
Tests were conducted at 1080p and 1440p.
From a Hardware point of view, this progression is not surprising. On paper, the Arc Pro B70 has 4096 shading units, compared to 2560 for the B60. This represents a jump of 60%. This difference explains the advantage observed in games. However there is a little surprise. The card does not yet seem to be fully exploited to its full potential.
The reference design shown by Intel is limited to a power of 230 W, while the manufacturer indicates that the card can go up to 290 W. Some partners are already going further such as Sparkle which is working on an even more advanced version (330 W). So the performance observed here could be just a glimpse of what the BMG-G31 GPU can really offer if its power supply is more generous.
The Arc Pro B70 can still do better
It is precisely this context which fuels discussions among enthusiasts around a possible gaming card derived from this chip. Even if Intel has not made anything official yet regarding the Arc B770, the existence of the Arc Pro B70 and its first in-game results show that the Big Battlemage architecture clearly has a response.
So for players who are expecting a rise in power and competition against AMD and Nvidia, Intel seems to have a high-performance chip even if it begins its life in a professional suit.
