It's not been a great few years for gamers, with runaway pricing making the best graphics cards out of the reach of many budgets. While we're still a little while away from the next round of flagships from AMD and Nvidia, Intel has launched Battlemage, its second-generation discrete graphics card range, and I'm cautiously optimistic. This could be the shakeup the GPU market has needed for some time, and I'm excited to see if that comes true.

The first generation of A-series Intel GPUs included the fantastic mid-range Arc A770, and now the B-series is hitting the market. It will be used not only for discrete desktop cards but also for laptops and gaming handhelds, bringing more competition to every area of computing. Intel is initially wisely targeting budget gamers, with the B580 starting from $249 and the B570 from $219. It's been a long time since this section of the market was served well, and I'm looking forward to it.

7 Targeting 1440p gamers is the right call

Enthusiasts might be noisier, but it's mainstream gamers who move the numbers

Flagship GPUs, like Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 or AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX, are headline-grabbers, but in terms of units sold, the enthusiast market is relatively small. That much power is fairly essential to run your games at 4K resolution, but again, the market is smaller. That's why I think Intel is smart for targeting 1440p gamers with Battlemage, as it gives them a much wider audience.

Steam's Hardware Survey is one of the best sources for what hardware gamers are actually using. It shows that enthusiasts make up a tiny fraction of the market. However, gamers using a 1440p monitor make up nearly 23% of Steam's user base. The largest group still uses 1080p resolution displays, with nearly 56% of the computers running Steam having that resolution.

The picture for GPU use is even more fragmented, as there are so many options on the market, and GPUs tend to last for a good few years before needing replacement. Most of the top graphics cards on the survey are budget or mid-range tiers, showing that gamers want value more than brute power overall.

It's not often we get an insight into retail unit sales per GPU, but German retailer Mindfactory publishes their numbers for anyone to read. Their sales figures also show that while flagship GPUs do sell well, the tiers below make up most of the sales figures. Intel will be hoping to increase its market share by undercutting the competition, and it might just work.

6 More VRAM than the competition

That's more value for your computer

Intel's Battlemage GPUs feature more VRAM than their nearest rivals in the Nvidia and AMD camps, and that's important, especially at 1440p gaming. Modern titles love VRAM to stuff more high-resolution textures into memory, and with 12GB GDDR6 on the Arc B580 and 10GB GDDR6 on the Arc B570, that's plenty.

Compare that to the AMD Radeon 7600, which has 8GB of VRAM (and a $100 higher price tag), and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060, which also has 8GB of VRAM for around $300, and Intel starts to look like a very good value proposition indeed. Those two cards are also better suited for 1080p gamers, while the new B-series Intel are targeting 1440p.

5 Low power draw

You won't need a new PSU for these

Budget gamers want lower power draw so they don't need expensive PSUs to power their systems, and Intel's Battlemage won't disappoint here. With the B580 having a 190W TDP and the B570 having a 150W TDP, they're both easy to power from a single PCIe cable and presumably easy to keep cool. That's around the same wattage that the closest Nvidia and AMD graphics cards need, but Intel has them all beat on price.

4 ​​​​​​​The competition abandoned the low-end

Budget gamers were left out in the cold

The cheapest budget GPU from this generation was the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060, which costs roughly $300, depending on the model and pricing fluctuations. The last time either of the two major graphics card manufacturers had a viable budget option was the AMD RX 480, which had a $239 MSRP for the 8GB variant. That card was released in 2016, almost a decade ago.

Every generation since then has increased in cost, leaving low-spec and budget gamers with few options for PC gaming. Even gaming consoles are of more value at this price level, although they can't do as many tasks as a PC. Intel went for the mid-range with the first-generation of Arc cards, to little success. They have a real shot at taking market share with Battlemage, as the price point undercuts everything else on the market.

3 ​​​​​​​A new viable SFF option

Smaller cards will please a very discerning crowd

With more powerful GPUs, they need more powerful cooling solutions to keep thermals in check. But when you only have to worry about 190W at the top end, Intel can reduce the size of Battlemage graphics cards so they can fit in more cases. While all the AIB models we've seen so far are either three or two fan coolers, the size seems greatly reduced from the beefy coolers we've seen recently, which is great news for small form-factor enthusiasts. With 1440p performance, Battlemage will enable them to build smaller gaming rigs with enough power for high frame rates, without having to figure out how to squeeze giant coolers into the case.

2 ​​​​​​​Might bring runaway GPU pricing back to earth

We can hope, anyway, but it forces the competition's hand

The graphics card market has exploded in the last few years, with expensive cards at every tier. Some of that is the economics around the pandemic, but even when component prices went back down, the finished GPUs did not. Intel is bucking that trend, by making Battlemage the most affordable GPUs on the market. It might not be enough to force Nvidia and AMD to lower their prices in response to begin with, but as market share increases, it will make the two stalwarts have to rethink their pricing strategy.

1 It'll be a productivity monster

Not everyone wants a GPU to play games on

Graphics cards do far more than just run games, and I can see Battlemage taking a big chunk of the productivity market for desktop workstations. A-series Arc cards were good at rendering, upscaling, encoding, and other creative tasks, but the price made them unattractive. With Battlemage, the price is greatly reduced, while the specifications have increased, making them more attractive in every way. With high VRAM amounts and plenty of bandwidth, these new GPUs look like a bargain.

​​​​​​​I can't believe I'm more excited about a budget GPU than the next round of flagships

We're about a month out from CES 2025, the traditional launch window for AMD and Nvidia's flagship GPUs. But I can't help but be more excited about what Intel's Battlemage is bringing to the market, with huge improvements to performance per core (up to 70%) and also per watt (up to 50%). It's been so long since there was a genuine alternative at the budget end of the market, and I hope this pricing strategy by Intel brings the results they are after.