Intel's quietly buffed its GPU drivers to fix gaming frame rate issues with some older processors

The Intel Arc B580 had a bit of a funny launch. Both a killer budget-oriented GPU and a bit of an inconsistent mess, it is clear that the hardware is impressive, despite all the crashes we got while testing. What's even less impressive, however, is its performance alongside older processors.

The B580 is a value-oriented GPU, so you'd expect it to be a good option as a drop-in upgrade for older machines, yet it infamously runs poorly on ageing CPUs. Luckily, Hardware Unboxed recently pointed out that performance has gotten significantly better as of late. Back in April, when paired with a Ryzen 5 5600 playing Spider-Man Remastered on High settings, the B580 received an average fps around the mid-80s.

Now, months later, with the same CPU but on the Very High setting, it manages to achieve an average fps of 118. So not only is it getting better scores, but it is also achieving that on a higher-quality graphic preset than previous B580 testing. It's worth noting the Ryzen 5 5600 isn't even a particularly old chip, originally launching in the middle of 2022. Where the B580 was once outshone by the 8GB AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT in the same test, they now stand neck and neck.

However, it's not entirely fixed, as Hardware Unboxed notes, Ryzen 5 2600 tests have seen no uplift with recent updates. Games which have a clear CPU bottleneck still don't see similar scores to the RX 9060 XT, as they should.

According to Hardware Unboxed, Intel claims these CPU overhead issues are relevant to specific games, so fixes came in the form of game-based optimisations. Despite matching scores in Spider-Man Remastered, the RX 9060 XT scores a 28 fps higher average across 10 games, and this can be partly attributed to CPU overhead in some games, and partly down to just raw performance.

According to a series of tests performed with multiple different drivers, the Intel update that seems to have caused this jump in performance (for the 5600 specifically) is version 32.0.101.7028, which was released in August. Notably, the release notes for 7028 don't include a mention of increased performance.

This seems peculiar as I'd certainly want to note when I'd made improvements to a product, but given the Ryzen 5 2600 hasn't seen the same uplift, the game-specific updates have obviously not led to widespread performance boosts on a range of older chips.

The 8GB RX 9060 XT MSRP is $300, though it does tend to drop a bit below that, whereas the ARC B580 comes in at an MSRP of $250. This is a 20% price delta between the two, and the 10-game sample from Hardware Unboxed placed performance at 30% higher for AMD. Which card to get largely depends on what kind of deals you can find, though also how old your CPU is, but these recent changes have certainly gone some way towards closing that gap.