Intel Arc A550M vs Intel Arc A580

Intel Arc A550M

The Intel Arc A550M (device ID 5692) is a dedicated mobile lower- mid-range graphics card for laptops based on Xe HPG microarchitecture. It uses the ACM-G10 chip and offers 16 of the 32 Xe-cores (256 ALUs), 16 ray tracing units and a 128-bit memory bus for 8 GB GDDR6 graphics memory. The cores can clock from 300 MHz (low frequency mode) to 900 MHz (high frequency) or in short bursts 2050 MHz (short bursts / Turbo). The chip integrates 21.7 billion transistors, uses a BGA2660 package and the die measures 406 mm2.

The performance of the Arc A550M should be between the Radeon RX 6500M and 6600M and therefore well suited even for demanding games in medium to high detail settings and 1080p. The slower Arc A370M is based on the smaller ACM-G11 chip and should be significantly slower.

The chip also integrates two media engines for VP9, AVC, HEVC, and AV1 8k en- and decoding. The 4 display pipes support up to 4x 4k120 HDR via DMI 2.0B or DisplayPort 2.0 10G.

The A550M is produced in 6nm at TSMC (N6 process) and supports dynamic power share (using Deep Link) with 12th gen Intel CPUs (Alder Lake).

Intel Arc A580

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The Intel Arc A580 is an affordable mid-range desktop GPU and is manufactured using the 6 nm process at TSMC. The Intel Arc A580 is also equipped with the DG2-512 graphics chip for the graphics processor, although this only has 3,072 shader units. The VRAM is based on 8 GB GDDR6 with a 256-bit interface (16 Gbps, 512 GB/s). This makes the Intel Arc A580 the third fastest graphics card model from Intel.

Features

Based on the Alchemist architecture, the Intel Arc A580 can rely on the same features as an Intel Arc A750 or an Intel Arc A770. Intel is extremely well positioned in the price range up to 200 euros with the Arc A580. AMD and Nvidia hardly have any suitable models in their portfolios in this price range. Features such as ray tracing are also supported and upscaling technologies such as XeSS can compete with DLSS and FSR. The latter can also be used on Intel graphics cards due to the open standard. With support for AV1, the graphics card is also interesting for content creators. Only the significantly more expensive Ada Lovelace models from Nvidia and the RDNA3 GPUs from AMD are currently capable of hardware-side encoding and decoding with the new codec.

Performance

The performance of the Intel Arc A580 is comparable to an AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT. The Intel Arc A580 can also keep up relatively well with an Intel Arc A750 in the internal duel. Newer games are somewhat more suited to the Intel Arc graphics cards. Nevertheless, many games can now be played well on Intel graphics cards and can be adapted well thanks to the constant driver improvements.

Power consumption

The power consumption of the Intel Arc A580 is estimated by the manufacturer at 175 watts (TGP). In terms of efficiency, however, the Intel Arc A580 is not convincing. Intel is at a disadvantage here compared to AMD and Nvidia. Whether this will change with the successor aka "Battlemage" remains to be seen.

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Intel Arc A550M

Intel Arc A580

Arc Series

Arc A770	4096 @ 2.1 - 2.4 GHz	256 Bit @ 16000 MHz
Arc A750	3584 @ 2.05 - 2.4 GHz	256 Bit @ 16000 MHz
Arc A580	3072 @ 1.7 - 2 GHz	256 Bit @ 16000 MHz
A770M	512 @ 1.65 GHz	256 Bit @ 16000 MHz
A730M	384 @ 1.1 GHz	192 Bit @ 14000 MHz
A570M	16 @ 0.9 - 1.3 GHz	128 Bit @ 14000 MHz
A550M	16 @ 0.9 - 2.01 GHz	128 Bit @ 14000 MHz
A530M	12 @ 0.9 - 1.3 GHz	128 Bit @ 14000 MHz
A370M	8 @ 1.55 GHz	64 Bit @ 14000 MHz
Arc A380	1024 @ 2 GHz	96 Bit @ 15500 MHz
A310	6 @ 2 GHz	64 Bit @ 15500 MHz
A350M	6 @ 1.15 GHz	64 Bit @ 14000 MHz

Arc A770	4096 @ 2.1 - 2.4 GHz	256 Bit @ 16000 MHz
Arc A750	3584 @ 2.05 - 2.4 GHz	256 Bit @ 16000 MHz
Arc A580	3072 @ 1.7 - 2 GHz	256 Bit @ 16000 MHz
A770M	512 @ 1.65 GHz	256 Bit @ 16000 MHz
A730M	384 @ 1.1 GHz	192 Bit @ 14000 MHz
A570M	16 @ 0.9 - 1.3 GHz	128 Bit @ 14000 MHz
A550M	16 @ 0.9 - 2.01 GHz	128 Bit @ 14000 MHz
A530M	12 @ 0.9 - 1.3 GHz	128 Bit @ 14000 MHz
A370M	8 @ 1.55 GHz	64 Bit @ 14000 MHz
Arc A380	1024 @ 2 GHz	96 Bit @ 15500 MHz
A310	6 @ 2 GHz	64 Bit @ 15500 MHz
A350M	6 @ 1.15 GHz	64 Bit @ 14000 MHz

Codename

Alchemist

DG2-512

Architecture

Xe HPG

Pipelines

16 - unified

3072 - unified

TMUs

128

192

ROPs

Raytracing Cores

Core Speed

900 - 2005 (Boost) MHz

1700 - 2000 (Boost) MHz

Cache

L1: 3 MB, L2: 16 MB

L2: 8 MB

Memory Speed

14000 effective = 1750 MHz

16000 effective = 2000 MHz

Memory Bus Width

128 Bit

256 Bit

Memory Type

GDDR6

Max. Amount of Memory

8 GB

Shared Memory

Memory Bandwidth

224 GB/s

512 GB/s

API

DirectX 12_2, Shader 6.6, OpenGL 4.6, OpenCL 3.0, Vulkan 1.3

DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), Shader 6.6, OpenGL 4.6, OpenCL 3.0, Vulkan 1.3

Power Consumption

80 Watt (60 - 80 Watt TGP)

175 Watt

Transistors

21.7 Billion

Die Size

406 mm²

technology

6 nm

PCIe

4 16x

4.0 x16

Displays

4 Displays (max.), HDMI 2.0b, DisplayPort 2.0 10G Ready

4 Displays (max.), HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 2.0

Date of Announcement

30.03.2022

10.10.2023

Link to Manufacturer Page

ark.intel.com

Tensor / AI Cores

384

Theoretical Performance

24.58 TFLOPS FP16, 12.29 TFLOPS FP32