Upon launch, Intel’s Arc B580 turned out to be one of the best graphics cards for people on a tight budget. It offered an unprecedented 12GB of memory at a surprisingly low $250 price tag. However, a new leak tells us that Intel — or rather, one of its partners — might have another winner up its sleeve. But will it ever see the light of day?
The rumored MaxSun Intel Arc B580 iCraft 24GB surfaced in a regulatory listing in the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC). First spotted by Olrak29_ on X (Twitter), the GPU ups the memory capacity from 12GB to 24GB, which is the same as what Nvidia’s RTX 4090 sports. This does sound too good to be true, though, and the comparison is an unfair one, because even with 24GB VRAM, the $250 (or more) Arc B580 can’t hope to beat Nvidia’s $1,600 (definitely more) RTX 4090.
The GPU appears in two variants, both of the iCraft variety, which does indeed exist in MaxSun’s lineup. Rumors of an Arc GPU with 24GB of VRAM have been circulating for a while, but most attributed them to Intel’s upcoming workstation graphics card, dubbed the Arc Pro A60. This model, made for professionals, might very well sport 24GB VRAM, although it’s unclear which GPU die it would use.
So, could two products potentially exist? Could Intel be working on a workstation Arc GPU with 24GB of VRAM, all the while its partners release a 24GB version of the flagship B580? It’s possible, but it’s hard to say just how likely it is.
While more VRAM is always a good thing, GPUs like the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB have taught us that without a robust memory interface, the GPU may not see much of a performance uplift outside of higher resolutions — which the B580 was definitely not made for. The Arc B580, if it came with 24GB, might retain the same memory bus, stifling its bandwidth and limiting performance. It’d still be nice for some use cases, but not a massive performance boost. Nvidia’s RTX 4090 would still have nothing to worry about.
Remember that EEC listings can mean something or nothing at all. Companies file them just in case sometimes, and many of these products are never released. Fortunately, we might not have to wait much longer to find out, as Intel is expected to mention its discrete graphics during Computex later this month.
