Category: Tech

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ARC B570: Better than it needs to be

How Did We Get Here

My adventures with Intel Arc video cards begins shortly after their release. I bought an Arc A750 in the spring of 2023, and immediately found issues. The price was fair at around two hundred fifty USD, but performance on many titles was insufferable. Some games couldn’t use the Direct X 11 API at all, and although Vulkan worked on many titles, games that had that as a choice, wouldn’t let you choose it. World War Z, for example, had horrible performance, drivers were broken, and the Vulkan API couldn’t be chosen. Some of my thoughts on it are here.

Performance on titles that had Vulkan as the default were okay, and many Direct X 12 titles worked, but the price was too high. The only hope was that Intel would do what they promised and fix the issues. Otherwise, this card one step above a paperweight. Then came the drivers. An update here, one a few weeks later, and a major one later. It also didn’t stop with just one or two. Updates continued to come seemingly every week. A major release at around the year mark fixed DX11 issues including some of those on WWZ , mentioned earlier. It also cleaned up most DX 11 issues. This card was now decent. A follow up video is here.

The one thing the Alchemist cards going for them was the adoption of the AV1 video encoder. The second thing was platforms like YouTube allowed AV1 and the encoder on the Arc A750 was outstanding. In fact, the Intel AV1 encoder for all of it’s cards performed well, even the lower tier A380. AMD and NVidia were both behind, here. With a smaller file size, little quality loss in compression and fast rendering, small creators had a gem.

But What About the Arc B570?

Shortly after the two year mark for Alchemist came Battlemage. The B580 released for desktops and the first thought was driver performance. The first thought should have been if these would be available. No one seemed to have these cards except reviewers, who were actually positive. It was a stark contrast from the previous release, and a great sign for consumers. Two months later, and the B580 is still not available. Okay, technically it is, if you want to pay a one hundred percent mark up.

One thing that did become available, at least occasionally, was the B570. The A770’s little brother was the A750 and likewise for the B570. Similar to the A750, the performance might not be up to the more expensive card, but it was still good. In this case, good enough to beat the RTX 3060 in many benchmark tests. It was also slightly better in the video encoding mentioned earlier.

It performs well in both 1080p and 1440p, and the model I picked up runs extremely quiet. Temperatures were also outstanding with the two fan model Sparkle brand card never going above the mid-60’s Celsius. The RTX 3060 I tested it against has 12GB of video memory, where the B570 has ten, but the only game that the NVidia card beat it soundly in didn’t use more than half the available memory. I used the RTX 3060 because it’s the most popular card on Steam, so it’s a realistic comparison.

So, what now?

The Sparkle card is actually a very attractive card as well. It has a few curves and a nice blue color, with small amounts of accent lighting and a nice fan design. I loved the original reference design from intel, and was hesitant to buy this one, but the reference looks to only be available on the higher model which is harder to find than NVidia’s new 50 series. The A380 I have is a Sparkle Brand card, but the design of the B570 actually impressed me.

This card will soon go into an upgraded editing rig. The color scheme for that machine is blue and white, so the new motherboard and this card will match well. The AV1 encoder is a definite feature, and now I know the gaming performance is as well. I’m sure I’ll write more about this card, and probably compare it to any new card I get from the other two companies, so stay tuned, but in the meantime the video with benchmarks can be found here.

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Yet another simple, missed opportunity for a good PC

How did we get here?

That part is relatively easy to explain. I have an HP prebuilt PC that I bought a few years ago to review on the YouTube channel. You can find the first video here. I found several ‘flaws’ with it that with a little help could have gone from a PC for basic web browsing and email, to a productive machine. Proprietary parts also made it difficult to upgrade with new ones.

Solutions did come with other companies making products that would also work in that PC, but HP’s choice to try to lock you into their eco structure limited those, and still does. Still, aftermarket power supplies and new types of video cards, added to the range of available upgrades. These could take this basic machine into something that would last longer than HP intended or may have wanted. I get it, make a computer that’s obsolete in a few years and someone has to buy a new one. Make parts hard to find, or have you as the only source and you make even more money. Eventually, though, consumers stop trusting you.

I struggled with a few of these, but managed to find a power supply for a similar machine, I upgraded the memory, and I added a small cooling fan so this prebuilt became a better version of itself. It could still fulfill it’s intended purpose, but now it was able to game and stream because video cards with reasonable power requirements could be added. The computer had a Ryzen processor with AMD graphics, so adding an RX 6400 became possible. That card is not particularly good, but it works. It is also much better than the onboard graphic.

Other Goodies in the HP PC

As it turned out, Nvidia video cards were also supported. By supported, I mean the BIOS for the motherboard recognized the card, and I could put things like a GTX 1660, or even an RTX 3050 6GB model, which could both drastically improve this simple PC into a small beast. I’ll have some feedback and right about the RTX before long, so please check back. For now I’ll simply point back to the blog page, here, but hopefully I remember to come back and update to the RTX 3050 blog when I write it.

By adding a small Noctua fan, the PC managed to stay cooler and the existing processor was more than capable. This prebuilt had all of the tools it needed to be a solid build. It had solid CPU performance, decent graphics performance and plenty of memory. But what if we could do more? The Intel Arc cards have an AVI video encoder. A very good video encoder. Surely we could make a solid editing machine.

The Rub

As it turns out, this PC doesn’t recognize the ARC GPU using the very same slot AMD and NVidia graphics cards use. In fact, the machine doesn’t even post or properly start up. Why is this an issue? Because other HPs from the same era, recognize Intel graphics. They may not have recognized Intel Discrete graphics on a stand alone card, but the CPU has it built in.

Why do I say it’s a simple problem to solve, maybe the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) isn’t set up to be able to do that. The only issue with that statement is that they have current BIOS available for other PCs that already have that option. The BIOS on many of their prebuilts is extremely limited, but they already have the very same feature available in other PCs, and the motherboard used in this prebuilt is very common. The worst part, there have been BIOS updates AFTER Intel video cards have been released. It shouldn’t be very hard. What good were the last several updates? It’s a straight miss for HP.

So, What do we do with the Prebuilt PC?

That part is easy. It’s a solid machine and eventually, it will again become someone’s every day driver. But, it does make for a great test PC and a fine experiment. My early experiences with this model were frustrating, but this thing now is almost like the family pet. Well, if I had a family living with me, or a pet. Still, this PC is solid and much more than I thought I was getting when I first reviewed it. I don’t think HP can take the credit for that , though. And I’m certainly not giving it any.

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Using the Old Standard or a Shiny New Rival

How did we get here?

I guess the first thing I should do is explain a bit further. Specifically, we are talking about the RTX 3050 6GB version mentioned in a blog here, and the GTX 1660. Typically, a good test would be the current card versus the next model up from the previous generation. That would mean testing the RTX 3050 against the RTX2060, but there is an issue with that.

The first issue is that the new card is the cut down version of the standard RTX 3050 with roughly 75 percent of the memory graphics processing and speed. It probably deserves an entirely different name, but NVidia enjoys confusing the consumer. It’s not the first time they’ve create a different product with the same name. Nomenclature doesn’t count as one the issues, though. For this example, we will only be talking about the current 6GB version.

The second issue is that we aren’t actually comparing cards with like characteristics. The GTX 1660 lacks the ability to Ray Trace and to use NVidia’s upscaling DLSS process. We won’t be looking at Ray Tracing and AMD has provided an answer to performance comparison, by offering Fidelity FX. Still, both of these cards do have 6GB of video memory.

There is one, very important difference that may give the newer card an edge.

More Power

The GTX 1660 requires external power. Modern motherboards are designed to offer 75 watts of power though the PCI Express slot. Most modern video cards use that and need additional resources provided by an additional dedicated cable. That also means that typically, the power supply needs to be a bit stouter. The last fact tends to limit some older PCs from being good candidates for without extra work.

Finding older Optiplexes or ThinkStations is pretty easy these days with older office PCs selling for pennies on the original dollar. Working PCs can often be found for less than fifty US dollars. They are often good candidates for some easy upgrades, but a few are more difficult. Things like power supplies and front panel connectors are often proprietary, making upgrading the graphics card or changing the case more difficult.

This is also the case for the GTX 1660. It’s not that it uses a lot of power, actually about 20% less than similar cards from AMD, the RX 480 and 580, but it does need external power. One option is using adapter cables, but that can introduce heat and other issues, not to mention a fire hazard. Still, its an option and can be a good one, if done properly. The 1660, and its ‘Super’ and ‘Ti’ versions are great options, even five plus years after their release.

The RTX 3050 has no such limitation because of its seventy-watt power draw. This, and the size could make it ideal to give some of these older office machines a new life as a gaming PC. It still won’t fit in the single low-profile slot that the RX6400 will, but that’s a different comparison.

So, which is better?

As it turns out, both of these cards are very well matched. The GTX 1660 performs slightly better on older titles and E-sports, and the 3050 doing slightly better on newer titles. The full video of this comparison with benchmarks can be found here, but there is one very important thing to discuss; the price.

Used GTX 1660’s and the sibling models range from 90 to 110 US dollars, while the RTX 3050 6GB cost another 40-60 bucks. You can save that on the rest of the hardware that won’t need a bigger PSU or adapters, but what that means to you may come down to what is available when you try to buy parts. The GTX 1660 is more than a worthy opponent, but the RTX 3050 definitely deserves part of the conversation.

The one thing left to talk about is why this card takes on a name that already exists. There seems to be no other reason NVidia does this except to confuse the consumer, and they do it often. They tend not to differentiate between laptop and desktop models and even cards with different memory or die configurations sharing names. Some more recent, blatant examples are the GT 1030 with both DDR4 and DDR5 being available with almost no markings, the GTX 1060 3GB and 6GB models and RTX 3060 available in 8 and 12GB.

It’s certainly confusing, and I, like others, have no idea, why they would do it. I will tell you what isn’t confusing, though, the 3050 6Gb is a decent card that has a valid use case. I may take a lot of flak for writing that, but except for the price, it’s as good or better than many of the other options available, especially options from Intel and AMD.

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Is the RTX3050 a great option for Budget Gaming?

How did we get here?

The simple answer is yes, but this question doesn’t have a simple answer. The target I usually set for a low budget gamer is between two hundred fifty and three hundred dollars. This video card will eat over half of that budget immediately. At between one hundred sixty and one seventy nine, this card is not a budget buy. What it does offer, however is great performance for its architecture. In particular, I’m talking about the 6GB version.

You see, NVidia in their infinite wisdom, has introduced another combination of different cards wit the same name. They have done this for years, like the GT1030 which came in DDR5, then DDR4. The GTX 1060 had a 6GB version and a 3GB. The RTX 3060 which had the standard 12GB, a Low Hash Version to prohibit crypto mining, and an 8GB version. They have even done it more recently by changing from DDR6x to DDR6 in some cards.

The RTX 3050 comes in two versions, or flavors if you prefer. The standard RTX3050 comes with 8GB of video memory, 256 more Cuda cores for processing, and a 1.78 GHz clock speed. The 6GB version runs with two less GB of video memory, the before mentioned shortage in processing power, and runs at 1.47 GHz. So, why would anyone buy the step-sibling?

Why I did it

The RTX3050 6GB version offers an advantage that the base version doesn’t. It has no need for external power. It is the closest thing NVidia has to a budget video card right now, placing it with the Arc A380 and the RX6400, though both are much cheaper. The offers from Intel and AMD respectively, also run on much less power and don’t need an external source, meaning a smaller power supply. Any of these cards can get by with a 300W power supply, maybe a little smaller, which means that Optiplex you picked up for 40 bucks, doesn’t need an upgrade and adapters.

In my case, I have a number of those old Dell PCs, some having 300W PSU’s or less. Until now, I have had to try the A380 or RX6400. Each of those has their own issue. The Arc A380 needs resizable bar, a configuration allowing data to flow more efficiently. Older gen hardware doesn’t support it, so performance suffers, horribly. The RX6400 runs on a four lane by PCIe 4.0 standard. Video cards of that era, all ran on 16 lanes. For comparison, NVMe SSDs run on four lanes. It is a sever limitation.

Some testing

The RTX 3050 6GB version runs on eight lanes, twice the bandwidth of the RX6400. It shows in testing, too. The RTX3050 consistently out performed the two other cards, sometimes by as much as double. In all cases, it was at least twenty percent better. But that was with a 12700KF, a recent CPU with PCIe 4.0 and resized bar, what about older stuff? I ran that too.

Running with a 4 core, 8 thread XEON E3-1270v3 from the $300 build , the results were all over the place with the RTX 3050 still outperforming overall, but with inconsistent numbers. I lead, sometimes by a few frames and other times by over twice as much. In all cases, it’s performance was predictable and replicable.

So, what’s next for the RTX3050?

This card will make the rounds on my testing bench for several weeks, then become part of a build. I’m not sure if that will be a budget build or something I would have put the GTX 1660 in, but I’m sure something like a micro ITX build will be very much to it’s liking and the small power requirement will also help keep the build cool. It’s not the cheapest card I’ve purchased, and it certainly isn’t the most expensive, so I’m not upset by the price, but this card really does need to retail for about twenty five dollars less than it does.

The reason it may not, is that it has a use case, like the RX6400. The AMD card is a single slot low profile that fits where other cards won’t, and although the performance suffers in older boxes, it’s still better than some alternatives. The 3050 has it’s place as well, with older machines that have the room, and it does perform well for it’s specs.

So, is it a budget card? No. Is it a card for a budget build? I’m saying yes and standing by my answer. It’s definitely a solid option for a budget minded build .

If you would like to read my other blogs, you can find them here. The video for the RTX 3050 can be found here.

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A great gaming PC on a hundred dollar budget

How did we get here?

My effort to find older budget PC’s and upgrade them has almost become a quest. I find an old prebuilt, or a motherboard/CPU combo then match the rest of the components, to get the best result per dollar. Often, this is a process that is tedious and frustrating. Occasionally, this turns out better than it has any right to.

One such example of success was the three hundred dollar Xeon build, here. There are too many failures to actually list, most recently, many of the yard sale PCs that are here. Of course there are others that fall somewhere between, but sometimes the effort matches the result. You start with a solid foundation, and there is room for improvement, at a reasonable price, Price in this case, being not just the cost, but the work.

One such example is the HP Z440 Workstation. These can be found all over for a range of prices, but the trick is to find one at a low cost, that comes with components like memory or maybe even a hard drive. These machines are capable of using an NVMe drive on an adapter card, and come with a quite capable processor. The one I purchased was on eBay with modest tax and shipping, for one hundred two dollars.

The Workstation

This came included with an E5 1650 v3, six core, twelve thread processor, 16GB of DDR4 error correcting memory, a seven hundred watt power supply, and a Quadro K4200 video card. It was clean and exactly as described in the listing. This was almost ready out of the box. And, let’s spend a moment on the box.

Sometimes, despite the best effort of the seller, they are at the mercy of the delivery company. In my case, FedEx physically moved a previously delivered package, and put both directly in the rain. I know they moved the other package, because it was Amazon, who sent a picture of that package on the other side of the doorstep, dry. Still, the PC was packaged well, and was dry on the inside.

Tests with the SSD in the Amazon package revealed a post and very strong testing in pr5oductivity applications. Less impressive were gaming tests, but The Quadro, with 4GB of VRAM, is not a gaming card. I do have gaming cards, though. Among them is a GTX 1660, the workhorse. Low power draw and good performance promise to make this Z440 a solid gaming option for under two hundred dollars. The previously tested Xeon E3 1270, with all new components, ran about three hundred.

Put an NVMe drive and a better GPU like an RTX 3060ti, or RX 6600XT, and the gains improve even more. Increase the memory, and we get a serious gaming PC that still doesn’t cost everything on the farm. Each of these will get their own video and blog, but suffice to say, this PC may return every ounce of effort I put in it.

The video for this blog is found here. Take a look at it here.