Intel’s Hidden Battlemage Monster: Arc Pro B70 Outperforms Radeon RX 9060 XT, But Gamers Can’t Have It
Intel’s largest Battlemage GPU, the BMG‑G31, has finally been tested in gaming workloads – and the results are impressive. German outlet PC Games Hardware put the Arc Pro B70 through its paces, revealing performance that beats the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB and sits close to the RTX 5060 Ti in some scenarios. The catch? It’s a workstation card, and Intel currently has no plans to release a gaming‑oriented Arc B770.
What Is the Arc Pro B70?
The Arc Pro B70 is Intel’s professional workstation card, powered by the full BMG‑G31 die with 32 Xe2 cores (4,096 shaders), 32 ray tracing units, and 256 XMX engines. It comes with 32GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256‑bit bus, delivering 608 GB/s of bandwidth, and carries a 230W board power rating. Unlike the consumer Arc B580 (which is limited to PCIe 4.0 x8), the Pro B70 supports PCIe 5.0 x16.
Gaming Performance: Faster Than Radeon RX 9060 XT
According to PCGH’s testing, the Arc Pro B70 is:
- 36% faster than the Arc B580 in rasterization
- 45% faster in ray tracing
- Faster overall than the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB across the tested game suite
- Behind the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB in ray tracing and path tracing, but still competitive
The card runs close to its 230W power limit in raster workloads and achieves similar efficiency to the Arc B580. However, it still trails AMD’s RDNA 4 and NVIDIA’s Blackwell in performance per watt. PCGH also notes that the advertised 2.8 GHz boost clock is rarely sustained; average clocks sit just under 2.6 GHz.
The Gaming Card That Never Was
Many enthusiasts expected Intel to launch a consumer Arc B770 based on the same BMG‑G31 silicon, but the company has focused its gaming lineup on the smaller BMG‑G21 (Arc B580/B570). The Pro B70 shows what could have been.
PCGH also estimated what a hypothetical gaming Arc B770 with 16GB of faster memory (20 GT/s GDDR6) and higher clocks (3.0 GHz typical) could achieve: up to 15% faster than the Pro B70. Even a simpler cut with higher board power but similar clocks would yield a 6‑7% gain. Such a card would likely use a 256‑bit bus, 640 GB/s bandwidth, and around a 300W TBP.
Also, Read
- Creator Reports Melted ASRock RX 9070 XT Connector – His RTX 4090 Melted Two Years Earlier
- AMD to Let Operating Systems Read Real CPU Boost Clocks with “HighestFreq” Update
- German Outlet Reports Melted RTX 5090 12V‑2×6 Cable in Press Test System
Why It Matters
The Pro B70’s gaming capability proves that Intel has the hardware to compete in the mid‑range – at least on paper. Without a consumer SKU, gamers remain limited to the B580 and B570. Intel has not announced any plans to release a gaming‑oriented BMG‑G31 card, leaving the “B770” as a tantalising what‑if.
For now, the Arc Pro B70 remains a workstation product, priced accordingly. But its gaming performance is a reminder of what Intel’s Battlemage architecture is truly capable of.
Source: pcgameshardware