Intel’s latest Arc Battlemage B580 performs well in Windows, but seems to have room to grow in Linux, benchmark go through Philonix exhibit.
B580, Just released last weeklaunched to fairly positive reviews, although Phoronix seems to be the first to compare the B580’s performance in Linux and Windows. The publication’s benchmarks also include test data from the Arc A770 and A580, which, as expected, are generally slower than the B580 in Windows.
The Intel GPU was tested in a variety of gaming and computing applications on Linux, and Phoronix noted that the goal was to compare the overall performance of the Linux driver in Windows and Linux, rather than measuring peak AAA gaming performance. Ultimately, the B580 actually lost out to the A770, which was nearly 2 percent faster overall across Phoronix’s full suite of gaming and computing benchmarks. Although the B580 is actually 25% faster in Windows, that means there’s a 27-point performance change when switching from Windows to Linux.
Linux isn’t a particularly bad area for Intel graphics either. In fact, the overall performance of the A770 and A580 actually improved after switching to Linux; the A770’s performance increased by 19% in Linux, while the A580’s performance improved by 20%. In comparison, the B580 is 8% slower in Linux than in Windows.
A key problem area with Battlemage’s Linux driver appears to be the Vulkan API. According to our statistics, there is no benchmark where the B580 performs relatively better than the Alchemist GPU when Vulkan is running. Even when all three Intel GPUs performed worse with Vulkan, the B580 suffered more than the A770 or A580. However, the OpenGL test is much kinder to the Battlemage GPU.
Some of the higher fidelity graphics settings in games also seem to cause issues with the B580. In Yamagi Quake 2 running natively on Linux, the B580 performed poorly when MSAA was enabled, and the Battlemage card lost more performance than the A770 or A580 when increasing resolution.
However, the B580 was significantly faster than the Alchemist GPU in Counter-Strike 2, and unlike the A770 and A580, it could also play Hitman 3 without crashing. However, these games still work better on Windows.
Intel has a pretty good track record of improving Linux hardware performance, so it wouldn’t be surprising if Battlemage’s performance profile improves in the coming months. There’s probably room for improvement, as the Alchemist GPUs perform better overall in Linux, and they’ve been out for over two years (though, hopefully, Intel won’t take that long to patch the B580).