Intel Arc B580 vs Nvidia RTX 5050: Which is better for 1080p gaming?

The Intel Arc B580 and the Nvidia RTX 5050 are going head-to-head in the sub-$250 entry-level gaming GPU market. While Team Green has opted for a DLSS 4 Multi-Frame Generation and improved ray tracing-based formula, the Intel offering brings 12 GB VRAM (vs. 8 GB on the Nvidia card) and better hardware specs to win the native rasterization aspect.

In this article, we have dissected the two budget GPUs in detail, going over their specs and gaming performance to decide a winner.

---

The Intel Arc B580 and Nvidia RTX 5050 target the sub-$250 1080p gaming market

The Intel Arc B580 is a capable 1080p gaming GPU (Image via Amazon)

The Intel Arc B580 and Nvidia RTX 5050 are based on wildly different architectures, and hence a head-to-head specs comparison won't reveal much about their performance differences. While Nvidia focuses on efficiency and better software integration, the Intel card is fully decked with hardware. Regardless, let's review the specs details to get an idea of what to expect.

---

Specs comparison

The Nvidia RTX 5050 is based on a heavily cut-down GB207 graphics chip, with a 149mm² graphics chip. You get 2,560 CUDA cores, 80 tensor cores, and 20 ray tracing cores, which is fairly limited for high-resolution gaming. Moreover, the card ships with 8 GB GDDR6 memory on a narrow 128-bit memory bus, resulting in a 320 GB/s bandwidth. This is in contrast to the faster GDDR7 memory commonplace with Blackwell. The limited hardware list makes the card quite efficient at just 130W, however.

Coming to the Intel GPU, you get the flagship BM-G21 graphics processor, which is fairly large at 272 mm². Moreover, the card also bundles 12 GB GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus. This gives the card a 456 GB/s bandwidth.

Here's a detailed specs comparison:

Specification	Intel Arc B580	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050
Architecture	Xe2 (Battlemage)	Blackwell
GPU Cores	20 Xe-Cores	2,560 CUDA Cores
Base/Boost Clock	2.67 GHz / 2.67 GHz	2.31 GHz / 2.57 GHz
Memory	12 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6
Memory Bus	192-bit	128-bit
Memory Speed	19 Gbps	20 Gbps
Memory Bandwidth	456 GB/s	320 GB/s
Ray Tracing Cores	20	32
AI/Tensor Cores	160 XMX Engines	64 Tensor Cores
Peak AI Performance	233 TOPS	421 TOPS
Power Consumption	190 W	130 W
PCIe Interface	PCIe 5.0 x8	PCIe 4.0
Display Outputs	3× DisplayPort 2.1, 1× HDMI 2.1a	1× DisplayPort, 1× HDMI
Price (USD)	~$250	~$249

In terms of price, both GPUs launched for $250, and their market prices have stabilized around the same. The winner will solely be decided based on how many frames each GPU can push out.

---

Performance comparison

The Nvidia RTX 5050 is the entry point to Blackwell GPUs with DLSS multi-frame gen (Image via Nvidia)

Here's how performance compares between the two GPUs at 1440p to present a worst-case scenario where titles will be bottlenecked by graphics capabilities. We have sourced these numbers from the YouTube channel EDWARD Gaming.

	Nvidia RTX 5050	Intel Arc B580
Assassin's Creed Shadows	35 FPS	39 FPS
Black Myth Wukong	33 FPS	33 FPS
Cyberpunk 2077	49 FPS	65 FPS
Far Cry 6	83 FPS	94 FPS
Ghost of Tsushima	44 FPS	63 FPS
God of War: Ragnarok	70 FPS	68 FPS
Hogwarts Legacy	52 FPS	61 FPS
Horizon Forbidden West	48 FPS	64 FPS
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2	47 FPS	53 FPS

On average, the Arc B580 is 16.5% faster than its Nvidia counterpart. The largest gains are seen in more graphics-heavy open-world titles like Cyberpunk 2077 (+32.7%) and Horizon Forbidden West (+33.3%). Black Myth Wukong, another demanding title, is surprisingly tied at 33 FPS. In God of War: Ragnarok, we see the 5050 lead slightly.

The extra VRAM on the B580 comes in handy if you're playing large open-world titles that are known to use more than 8 GB VRAM. However, since budget gamers won't be playing at native resolution, DLSS 4 Multi-Frame Generation support makes a real difference with the 5050. Given the supported library is already at 500 games and grows by the day, we recommend opting for the Nvidia GPU.