Intel Arc Pro B-Series GPUs are Promising

Last year when Intel launched their Arc B-Series desktop graphics cards, I knew right away that the community need to wait a bit longer to get their hands on the pro GPUs. I think this is pretty much the norm in GPU industry. The manufacturer will release the gaming cards first and then release the professional workstation level card afterwards. These particular type of cards are the focused GPUs that certain professional would be longing to use for wide range of their tasks.

Not so surprisingly I also purchased the Intel Arc Pro A40 GPU last year which belongs to the A-Series family. I purchased this particular card twice but had return both of them for separate reasons. First time when I ordered the card, it came without the low-profile bracket which meant I could not use it with my smaller computer case. I reached out to seller but unfortunately they did not had the bracket either as they received it directly from HP. After receiving the second item from separate seller, I realized that the GPU is running much hotter than what I expected and I returned it as well.

I did not stop there and ordered the Arc A310 GPU as well. This particular GPU was not a professional card yet I bought it simply because of it's price point and for having AV1 encoding feature. Yes, it was well below half the price of what I paid for the A40 but the GPU was a total disaster for me and caused so much headache. Then there was the fan issue which you would find users were complaining about all over the internet. Even though some user praised the card which served their purpose of running a Plex media server. Unfortunately, my use case did not justify this card.

I eventually ended up getting the Nvidia RTX A1000 which is a single slot GPU with 8GB of VRAM. I am still using it with my new computer build and so far I am quite happy with the performance, no complain whatsoever. The only downside of this GPU from my end is not having the AV1 encoding feature even though the decoding works just fine. Also, let us not forget that the maximum power consumption of this is card is only 50 watt.

So far, that is the story of last year. Fast forward to September of this year when Intel launched their Arc B-Series Pro GPUs including B50 and B60. Only B50 is being compared with with RTX A1000, be it on social media site or by reputable site like STH and I quite agree with their views. Based on the pure specifications of the B50 and price to performance ratio, B50 is definitely the clear winner here.

However, I think both the reviewer somewhat pushed aside the fact that the B50 is a dual slot GPU whereas RTX A1000 is a single slot based card. Also B50 has double the VRAM of A1000 and can use 70 watt of power while A1000 is limited to 50 watt maximum and generates much less heat. I think these are quite important factor as well unless you are comparing an apple with an orange. Ampere is quite old architecture by now. We had Ada Lovelace and now Blackwell architecture which came out almost the same time when Intel B-Series GPU were announced.

I am not going make a big deal out of the facts I mentioned above. Just thought of pointing out those differences. I would be really interested to see future Pro series GPU from intel with similar form factor. No matter how we want to portray these cards against one another, I believe they all have their own use case and fanbase. Then again there is no denying of the fact that Intel is pushing really hard and slowly but consistently moving ahead of the game in GPU sectors. So far B-Series Pro GPU seems nothing but quite promising to me.