Intel’s newest B580 GPU underperforms last-gen Arc Alchemist card in Linux benchmarks – likely due to early teething pains

Intel’s latest Arc Battlemage B580 performs well in Windows but seems to have room to grow in Linux, benchmarks by Phoronix show.

The B580, released just last week, launched with fairly positive reviews across the spectrum, though Phoronix seems to be the first to compare how the B580 does in Linux compared to Windows. The publication’s benchmarks also include testing data from the Arc A770 and A580, which, as expected, are generally slower than the B580 in Windows.

The Intel GPUs were tested in various gaming and compute applications on Linux, and Phoronix notes the goal is to compare the overall performance of the Linux driver in both Windows and Linux as opposed to measuring peak AAA gaming performance. In the end, the B580 actually lost to the A770, which was almost 2% faster overall when measured across Phoronix’s full suite of gaming and compute benchmarks. That’s despite the B580 actually being 25% faster in Windows, meaning there’s a 27-point shift in performance when switching from Windows to Linux.

Linux isn’t a particularly bad area for Intel graphics, either. In fact, the A770 and A580 actually gained performance overall when switching to Linux; the A770 got a 19% performance boost in Linux, while the A580 improved by 20%. By contrast, the B580’s speed in Linux was 8% lower than in Windows.

One key problem area for Battlemage’s Linux drivers seems to be the Vulkan API. By our count, there wasn’t a single benchmark where the B580 did relatively better than the Alchemist GPUs when Vulkan was in play. Even in cases where all three Intel GPUs did worse when Vulkan was used, the B580 lost more ground than either the A770 or the A580. However, the OpenGL tests were much kinder to the Battlemage GPU.

Some higher fidelity graphics settings in games also seem to trip up the B580. In Yamagi Quake 2, which runs natively on Linux, the B580 struggled when MSAA was enabled, and when increasing the resolution, the Battlemage card lost much more performance than either the A770 or the A580 did.

However, in Counter-Strike 2 the B580 was much faster than the Alchemist GPUs, and it could also play Hitman 3 without crashing, unlike the A770 and A580. These games still ran better on Windows, though.

Intel has a pretty decent track record when it comes to improving the performance of its hardware in Linux, so it wouldn’t be surprising if Battlemage’s performance situation improves in the coming months. There is likely room for improvement since Alchemist GPUs performed better overall in Linux, and they’ve been out for over two years (though, hopefully, it won’t take that long for Intel to patch the B580).