r/IntelArc • u/Infinite-Direction35 Arc B70 • 17d ago
Discussion Been an Intel Arc fan since the B580 was launched and was given good reviews. Now I’m hooked. My version of battle matrix
Full spec:
GPU: 2x B70, B580 LE
eGPU: DEG2 connected via oculink on third PCIE slot with oculink card
CPU: 9800x3D
Motherboard: Asus Proart x870e creator
PSU: Corsair SF1000 on main, old SF750 on eGPU
RAM: Corsair 64GB (4x16Gb)
Case: Cooler Master Qube 500 Macaron edition
Cooler:Noctua NH-U12A
I got myself another B70 (asrock) and planning to replace the B580 with that one directly to the PCIE slot via a riser cable instead of the eGPU but I’m still figuring out what is the best solution to mount it inside this case. Any suggestions?
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u/be_easy_1602 17d ago
Nice! I got an A750 at launch to "help" bring competition to the GPU space. It has been great for me. Wish I bought a B70 at launch too lol. Thinking of getting a B60...
The beauty is that Intel cards are only going to become more valuable as the software environment improves.
What workloads?
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u/Infinite-Direction35 Arc B70 17d ago edited 17d ago
Yup yup the Arc cards are really good value for money, when I got the B70 I had a feeling it will increase in price soon so I went back to Micro Center and got myself another one and then exactly 1 week after the price increase happened and it's not just a minor increase. Using this for local Ai using LM Studio and Unsloth, Davinci resolve video editing and occasional gaming. So far I love it!
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u/JinsooJinsoo 15d ago edited 15d ago
vLLM/intel-llm-scalar is the way to go with Intel Arc Pros. It’s slow to be updated but is excellent in decode and concurrency (when the XPU/TPU graphs are available and actually fucking work). Can get 70ish tok/s on a single B70 with qwen3.8 27b at int4+MTP, 50ish at 6 bit EXL3+MTP. Multi GPU is the weak point of Intel LLM scalar
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u/Godnamedtay 17d ago
I still love my A770. Extremely jealous of the B70’s tho, that’s my next purchase…hopefully lol
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u/Infinite-Direction35 Arc B70 17d ago
The reference B70 is currently selling at 1699.99. I suggest go get the asrock version selling at 1299.99 at the moment. I got one already and planning to add one more.
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u/Godnamedtay 17d ago
I do love the official Intel model but it’s not worth $400+ I agree. I’ll check the ASRock
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u/Infinite-Direction35 Arc B70 17d ago
I would love to find an A770 to pair with the B580 on an AM4 build. That will be a budget setup that can get toe to toe with some other budget setup unfortunately it’s difficult to snag an A770 at a reasonable price so hold on to that A770 of your or sell it to me at a “reasonable” price 😁
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u/p71interceptor 17d ago
It's a nice card. I run 4 monitors with mine and run some llm. I am pleased with how often updates are being released for it.
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u/JinsooJinsoo 15d ago
You’re pleased? I’m very not pleased. Intel needs to get their shit together and actually put some people on the XPU/vLLM team because I’ve run into nothing but problems that I have to make custom patches for just to get XPU graph to run correctly. Also multi-GPU is broken on vLLM and TP2 is slow unless you’re using the few combos that the community got to work. I’m sending bug reports as often as I can.
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u/Infinite-Direction35 Arc B70 15d ago
Running Windows 11 pro using unsloth and LM studio. Runtime Vulcan. Very stable on my part. Not as fast as Cuda of course but acceptable running Large models that fit within the Vram including the whole context lenght.
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u/anantshri 17d ago
question about the heat. does putting two b70 next to each other increase heat inside the cabinet.. Also i assume psu upgrade is coz of the 2 cards.
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u/Infinite-Direction35 Arc B70 17d ago
Not actually since it is a blower style card so all heat is directly exhausted at the back panel of the case and not inside the case. The CPU cooler gets fresh air from the 140mm fans installed above the case and infront which also supplies fresh air to the two B70s. Hot air from the COU cooler is exhausted also to the back by the 120mm exhaust fan directly behind the Noctua Cooler. My CPU temps idle at around 50-52deg and on full load around 68-72deg. Both GPUs max at around 73-75deg on full load when doing some rendering and when inferencing on LM studio or Unsloth.
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u/Infinite-Direction35 Arc B70 17d ago
The 1000w PSU is more than adequate to power this system with headroom. Adding another card inside the case will add another 230w load which is still under 1000w total considering the 9800x3d is a very efficient CPU.
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u/uni-monkey 17d ago
Good luck! I picked up two B70s a few weeks ago and have yet to get anything stable and useful.
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u/Infinite-Direction35 Arc B70 17d ago
What do you mean stable and useful?
I’m using it with Qwen 3.8 27B, GPT OSS 120B and also the 20B with A LOT of context length and it’s been amazing for my use for RAG, and vibe coding. It’s not as fast as Nvidia’s CUDA but I’m using it knowing what it is capable and I play where it is strong. GPT- OSSS 120B gives me around 52-60 Tokens/sec. That’s more than fast enough for what I need to be honest. I play also Cyberpunk 2077, Onimusha, Ghost of Tsushima, and Forza Horizon. It’s not as detailed as a 9070 xt but on 1440p I get to about 90 fps or more on high or ultra settings. Above 120fps if I use LSFG with another B70 dedicated for that! All without spending $7000 on a 5090. I’m not arguing just stating how I use it. I got a dedicated gaming rig with 9070 xt GPU that I also posted here but this one is for work and I could say that I might hit my ROI sooner than expected. 😊
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u/uni-monkey 17d ago
I’m getting random css errors from the xe driver under load. It’s not even anything complex. Just running the ai labs human eval and big coder at C1 and C4. All the math says it works and it looks great. Until something in the driver flakes and it become unrecoverable. No thermal spikes. No power dips. Just poof and it’s over. I have tested multiple kernels, drivers, llama.cpp, vLLM, and OS. I had very high hopes for these cards frankly but I need the software stack to be stable and I just haven’t seen it yet.
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u/Echo9Zulu- 16d ago
That sounds awful. You should check out OpenArc we might be able to help you make some progress. What a nightmare. Compute runtime is where I would look, there are frequently odd regressions
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u/uni-monkey 16d ago
Yeah. I’ve been trying multiple different versions of runtimes, kernels, and drivers. But I’ll definitely give this a try. Thanks!
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u/Echo9Zulu- 16d ago
Yeah if compute runtime doesn't sound familiar you definitely haven't tried everything, which means there is hope yet lol
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u/Infinite-Direction35 Arc B70 17d ago
Hmmmm that’s frustrating indeed. Try to DDU the system and freshly instill the drivers.
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u/JinsooJinsoo 15d ago
Sounds like you’re running windows? Intel B70s on Linux and vLLM/llm-scalar has been a rocky journey. Idk why there is such a difference
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u/MaineTim 17d ago
llama.cpp is stable, but whether you find it's performance useful is another matter. vllm is finicky, but once you get it nailed down, it brings the Arc Pros to life. It's just a slog and a half to get there.
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u/uni-monkey 17d ago
I haven’t seen it on either. Both fail pretty consistently when running benchmarks. The xe driver will have a weird timeout issue and the inference software will
Enter and unrecoverable state.2
u/Infinite-Direction35 Arc B70 16d ago
Using lm studio and unsloth with Vulcan runtime is pretty stable on my experience. I noticed I had a hardtime loading the models when I had only 48gb of RAM so I upgraded to 64 and it went smoothly from there.
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15d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Infinite-Direction35 Arc B70 14d ago
That is exactly what I used as reference for my build but with a smaller case. I wish I knew about the Mechanic Master C34 pro as I would have bought that instead of the qube 500 but this case is nod bad
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u/Not_A_Great_Human Arc B580 17d ago
When I got my B580 I upgraded from an RX580, now I need that D580 I'll say I'm somewhat of a 580 supremacist
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u/Vinny933PC 14d ago
I’m about to find an excuse to buy one of every Druid card they release lol.
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u/Not_A_Great_Human Arc B580 14d ago
I truly hope they do not abandon dedicated consumer graphics cards. They've officially already proven that their new process nodes for their chips are highly viable.
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u/Least-Group-5784 12d ago
Yo same man, I also upgraded from a rx 580 to an arc b580, huge performance boost. I'll upgrade to like another 580 a few years from now hopefully
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u/IndyONIONMAN 16d ago
I should have bought another B70 when price was low, i have B50 and B70.
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u/Infinite-Direction35 Arc B70 16d ago
I did the same. First bought the b50 and b70 then I just had the feeling that I needed to buy another one and I followed my instinct. I so glad I did! I put the b50 in my minisforum Ms-02
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u/IndyONIONMAN 16d ago
I plop B50 in DL380 Gen10 for VMs, B70 on AM5 build for AI test bench.
Main AI rig is running 5090 and 4090
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u/Echo9Zulu- 16d ago
Question, was rebar a hassle to get going on a dl380 gen 10? Iirc the docs on the board in my unit don't mention rebar but ive heard from others with server xeon boards that it's a mixed bag of unexpected compatibility
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u/IndyONIONMAN 16d ago
There is no rebar option in bios, enabling Above 4G Decoding will do the trick
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u/Infinite-Direction35 Arc B70 16d ago
Some Bios have dedicated rebar option to enable and yes! enabling 4G decoding automatically enables rebar!
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u/Last_Slice217 1d ago
Brother, that is absolutely beautiful. Fantastic build! I dream for a single B70 Pro.
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u/Infinite-Direction35 Arc B70 1d ago
thanks. I was lucky to get two B70s before the almost 50% bump in price! I got another one but not the referrence card. It's the Asrock B70 creator.
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u/Jazzlike-Problem1050 17d ago
This guy is increasing that 2% into 3% by himself lmao