Store accidentally sent customer a new Intel graphics card a month before official release

A German retailer accidentally sent a PC Games Hardware forum member an Intel Arc B570 graphics card ahead of its official release in January. The Arc B570 is a stripped-down version of the B580 with 10GB of video memory.

The card owner installed the drivers manually through the Windows Device Manager, ignoring the errors. After rebooting, the system recognized the card as an Arc B580 with 10 GB of VRAM and 15 Xe cores, although according to the specifications, the B570 should have 18. Despite the non-standard installation process, no errors or malfunctions were detected.

Tests showed that the video card consumes only 10 W in idle mode with the Firefox browser running. In games such as World of Warcraft Classic and Deus Ex, the video card showed stable operation, although performance was not measured.

The Arc B570 is positioned as a budget solution in the video card segment and, according to preliminary estimates, will be comparable in performance to the RX 6600 XT or Arc A770, but at the same time will offer an updated architecture and support for technologies such as XeSS Frame Generation. The price at the time of release will be $219, making it an interesting option for those looking for an affordable gaming solution.