I bought an AMD RX 9060 with 8GB of VRAM a couple of months ago for about €276 (around $320). Before that, I was using the Radeon 760M integrated graphics on my Ryzen 5 8600G, so I mainly wanted an affordable dedicated GPU. I recently found an Intel Arc B580 12GB for about €362 (roughly $419), and I'm wondering whether the extra 4GB of VRAM makes it worth selling my current card and switching.
I'm a casual gamer these days because work and a master's degree take up most of my time. I'm not interested in spending much more on a high-end card, but I would like my system to remain useful for as long as possible. Would the B580 be a worthwhile upgrade or a better long-term choice, especially with memory prices increasing? I originally bought the RX 9060 because Intel graphics cards were not available locally at the time.
4 Answers
If you’re playing at 1080p, 8GB should be fine for your use case. If you move to 1440p later, it would be better to save for a faster 16GB card rather than changing to the B580 now. Since you’re a casual gamer, the extra cost and hassle probably aren’t worth it.
The B580 is especially hard to justify at around $419. That price is too high for what it offers, and there’s more to gaming performance than memory capacity. Keep the card you have and consider upgrading later when a genuinely faster model with 16GB or more fits your budget.
The RX 9060 non-XT seems to be an unusual OEM or liquidation-stock model, but finding one locally at €276 explains why it was such a good deal.
I’d keep the RX 9060. It’s noticeably faster overall, while the B580’s main advantage is having more VRAM. For a casual 1080p gamer, it makes more sense to lower texture quality if a game ever reaches the 8GB limit than to spend another €86 on a slower card. VRAM capacity alone doesn’t make the B580 a worthwhile upgrade.
A local PC parts retailer had new XFX SWFT RX 9060 cards available from liquidation stock. They were much cheaper than the other new graphics cards here, although the price has gone up since I bought mine.