Sparkle Intel Arc A580 ORC OC Edition, 8GB GDDR6, ThermalSync, Torn Cooling, Axial Fan, Metal Backplate, SA580C-8GOC

I really wanted the Battlemage B580 from Intel, rather than either AMD or Nvidia for a graphics card, and for video editing, it needed to be ideally an X16 graphics card and with at least 10GB of memory, or more, but the card was elusive as it was bought out by scalpers and resold on eBay. In early January, I found a listing here on Amazon for the Sparkle branded A770, the previous gen Intel card, also known as Alchemist.It's I believe to be a true 4K card with 16GB of memory and has had several driver updates since introduction 2 years or so ago and some of its early teething issues have since then become abated.It went into a 15th gen based Core 7 Ultra build, which also included a fresh, new chipset and socket and my choice was potential future proofing for at least a couple of generations, though that's no guarantee.Anyway, I run at the moment, a year old 1080P 22" monitor from Onn (a Walmart brand) and a Dell 27" 4K monitor. The Onn monitor is connected to Display Port via DP to HDMI dongle at the card due to it having a display port, and is 1080P, the Dell can do Display Port, but via the USB C connector at the monitor and full size DP port on the card and there is only 1 HDMI port.Sadly, the dongle does not pass anything higher than 1080P, so the Onn got that, and the Dell runs full HDMI for 4K.After all updates, including Intel graphics card drivers, Gigabyte BIOS updates etc, the card runs great and I think the image is a bit sharper on both monitors. Previous card was an older GT1030 from Nvidia that goes with the previous small form factor Dell that this current PC I built replaces.Setting it up for 2 monitors took a few minutes but I was able to get it set up, and have the mouse move between them.Preliminary trial of Davinci Resolve 19 (most recent version) on a 1080P timeline not optimized yet showed mostly all smooth scrubbing of H.264 footage. Not bad at all.Really like this card and just FYI, like most cards of recent generations, 3 Display Ports and one HDMI port, while they technically can do upwards of 8K with the latest iterations of both the Display Port specs and HDMI specs, the card itself, depending on the model you have may not be capable of doing 4K without struggling for anything but playback of video, let alone many games and not produce higher frame rates.Likely not anything as powerful as a 4090 or 5090, but it is not a 2000 dollar card for the 5090, but instead, sells for under 350 US.While it is not the latest iteration of XeSS 2, it has many of the current Battlemage specs via software/driver updates for Battlemage as well. So far it's stable and works smoothly.Glad I went ahead with getting this card as the B580 has been hard to find.

If you don't care about gaming - and this card is not for gamers - then this card has one big advantage: transcoding. Need something cheap, low power draw, doesn't need PCI-E connector, and can transcode like mad for homelab? This is the right card for that purpose.Do NOT buy this card expecting to game. Period. It won't do it. Buy it for fast transcoding. Note: you have to have rebar support or this card will lose significant performance. So if you don't have rebar support in an older BIOS, pass. If you plan to use this card in a passthrough for something like ProxMox or XCP, etc. you'll lose rebar and performance gets cut basically in half. It's still quite good, but it never gets the performance you wish it would be.

Purchased this for my plex server. I have a TruNas Mini X+ running TrueNas Scale. Wanted the server to have the ability to do server side transcoding to ensure it runs smoothly. Open the side case.....woooooooo Tight squeeze but it fits. Click a couple of boxes in the web app, and the server app, check dashboard on web plex app, when you change resolution if transcoding is required it will have the this (hw) which means hardware. Super happy ;)

I've been using this GPU for about a week now so this is more of a first impressions review. If my experience with it gets better (or worse) over time I will come back and update it.So far since upgrading to the A770 from a GTX 1650 Super I have crashed twice in Fortnite. I never had a crash in this game with my other GPU so I can only assume this is a driver problem. I've also had 1 blue screen PC crash since installing this GPU and I'm hoping that doesn't happen again. Finding the proper graphic settings seems like a job because after trying different settings in game I can't seem to find that sweet spot that gives me good FPS without my game looking like its running on a potato. I just settle with Medium graphic settings with a couple custom changes such as 3D resolution and view distance and I am able to get around 100-120 FPS. Even still, I get random stutters here and there so I don't know if its entirely on the GPU or if its my PC overall contributing to this. My PC is:AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor 3.60 GHzWindows 10 Home32GB XPG DDR4 MemoryGigabyte B450M DS3H Mobo1TB Samsung NVMe drive (most of my games are installed on this)500GB Samsung Evo SSDYes my mobo BIOS is updated and REBAR is enabled. I have the latest drivers for this GPU as well. I know my system is a budget build, but I expected the overall performance and experience using this GPU to be a bit better than this. I do plan on using this GPU in an Intel based build in the future so hopefully by that time I will have a better experience with it. This GPU also seems to run more on the hotter side almost all the time. The color changes on the GPU lighting to indicate the current temperature range. If its blue then its cool but if it changes to orange then its getting hotter. This GPU has been in the orange color for me most of the time when I'm just doing something simple such as playing Fortnite. I'll try adding more cooling to my system to see if that helps but I didn't expect a game like Fortnite to make it run hot especially when not on the highest settings. I will say when I do set the graphics settings to high the game looks incredible, but the FPS goes way down. Again, maybe that is in part due to my budget build so if this improves in my next build I will update my review.The graphics card itself looks amazing. It'll give your PC that high end look when you install it. On a side note, don't try to put this thing in a small PC case unless you're sure it can fit. I had to "modify" my PC case to get this thing to fit so make sure you have enough room for it. The only reason I chose this card over an NVIDIA is because it was the cheapest 16GB vram GPU I could find. I figured the extra vram would help keep it "future proof" for awhile so I wouldn't have to worry about upgrading the GPU anytime soon. I almost wish I would've just went with a 4060 RTX 8GB but I will hold out for now and see how things go. I'm hoping they continue to improve the drivers and do everything they can to ensure people who use this GPU are getting the best possible experience.Other games I have played since installing this GPU:World of WarcraftNew WorldOverwatchForwarnedFall GuysMy main game is Fortnite but in the few hours I've put into the games above with this A770 I would say overall its been a good experience with just having some stuttering here and there in Overwatch. I'll update this review in a few months, or when I try this GPU on a higher budget Intel based system.Update: In the time between I made this review and until now (1/3/2024 just 3 days...) Fortnite has crashed about 5 more times at random. Again, I'm pretty sure this is a problem with the GPU because I did not have this problem before with a different GPU. I have also started seeing rapid flickering of textures and objects in game which now happens everyday. I don't feel like I am using a 16GB vram gpu with the amount of problems I have experienced in the very short amount of time I've had it. I don't think this particular gpu runs well on older (not old) hardware despite my mobo having REBAR support and everything as up to date as I can have it. I'm starting to already regret choosing this gpu over an 8GB nvidia one I could've gotten for around the same price. I can only hope it runs better on a newer system in the future, or a driver release somehow makes it perform better on my current system.Update 2: More of my games are now crashing using this GPU, which defeats the whole purpose of "upgrading" a gpu. I did not have these crashes on my previous gpu so my guess is its a driver issue.Update 3: I tried new settings in Fortnite from a guide I found online and after testing them for a few matches my FPS has gotten way better (staying at around 165 fps most of the time with it going between 110-165 depending on whats going on during the match) and the overall experience being much better than the past week I have used this card. The flickering seems to have stopped (for now) and I haven't experienced any random stutters or sudden fps drops like before. I'll continue to test the gpu with these new settings over the next few days and see if it maintains the performance I experienced tonight. I'll bring the Star rating back up to 3 and will consider moving it to 4 or perhaps even 5 if I can go a week straight with the same performance increase I had tonight with these new graphic settings. I'm also hoping the crashes have stopped (also note Fortnite is not the only game I have experienced a crash in, so I don't know if that is due to drivers or any specific graphic setting). Anyone who knows even a little about gpus and PC gaming in general knows that crashes can be hard to diagnose and fix. I know for me they only happened once I switched GPUs.Update 4 (1/18/2024)I decided to upgrade my previous 3 star rating to now 5 stars. All of the previous problems mentioned in my review so far have went away. I have not crashed in Fortnite since having the new in game settings and the game looks and performs really well. It makes me excited for how well I can make my games look and perform when I upgrade the rest of my computer. I'm able to maintain a steady 125-165 FPS in Fortnite all the time now. All of my other games are doing great too on this GPU. Overwatch gives me a random stutter frame drop but I think that may be because I haven't yet found the right in game settings for what my computer can handle with the game. I will next be trying Resident Evil 2 Remake with ray tracing enabled to see how well the game looks and performs on this GPU and my current PC. I was able to make it look and play pretty good with my previous GTX 1650 Super so I think I can go a lot further with this new GPU especially since it has way more VRAM than my previous GPU (16GB compared to 4GB on my other gpu). Overall I think the A770 is a pretty solid GPU and worth the upgrade especially in budget builds looking to get that extra performance without spending a ton of money. Just make sure your computer is compatible with it and that you have a REBAR ready mobo. I think Intel will be a worthy competitor to AMD and Nvidia so long as they stay on top of driver updates and competitive pricing. I'll be interested to see when and if they make something comparable to a high end 4090.Update 5 (1/28/2024)I'm dropping my rating for this GPU back down to a 3 from a 5. Updating to the latest drivers for this GPU started making Dead by Daylight crash. I couldn't even complete a single match before the game would crash every time. Anyone who plays this game knows that crashing in that game is not good as you get a leaver penalty that stacks which prevents you from playing the game. Nothing makes me want to stop using a GPU and lose faith in the brand of it faster than game crashes. As of now, I will definitely be going back to Nvidia when I can afford one of their higher VRAM RTX models. I never had crashing problems in my games using even an older GTX 1650 Super. The A770 gives much better FPS, but what is the point of better FPS if your games crash? I also noticed certain places in Fortnite were flickering with the latest driver. Thankfully the game didn't start crashing again and the FPS is still good. I'll try reverting back to a previous driver and see if that helps. Game crashes are simply unacceptable especially for a GPU of this level.Update 6 (2/26/2024)I reverted the driver back to 31.0.101.5085 and tested it with my games for a few weeks. My game crashes have stopped (the most important thing) and overall the performance is pretty good for my budget PC. I have noticed some FPS stutters in random places in Dead by Daylight but other than that it has been a good experience. The right drivers mean everything. Updating to the latest driver isn't always the best thing to do, at least in my experience. I think for now I will wait awhile between driver updates and see how it goes but the driver I am using now seems to be what works best for my PC. This will probably be my last update to this review until I try the GPU out in a better PC and I'm not sure when that will be. For now I will bring the star rating back up to 4. I think the right settings in your games and the right driver is the key. I know for me the issues I had in Fortnite seemed to be fixed mostly by finding the right settings in game. However the game crashes didn't stop until I used the right driver. The difference was night and day in Fortnite when I found the right settings for my PC.