Intel’s Big Battlemage GPU Looks Like an RTX 5060 Ti, Not the Gaming Monster Fans Wanted
Intel’s big Battlemage GPU has finally been tested in games, and the result is interesting… but also a bit sakit hati for anyone hoping Intel had a hidden gaming beast waiting in the lab.
The card in question is the Intel Arc Pro B70, built around the larger Battlemage chip known as G31. This is not the same GPU used in the Arc B580, which runs on the smaller G21 chip. G31 is the bigger sibling, and for a while PC hardware fans wondered whether it could have become Intel’s proper mid-to-high-end gaming card.
According to benchmarks from German outlet PCGamesHardware, the answer is basically: not really. In normal raster gaming, the Arc Pro B70 lands around the same level as Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti 16GB. That is not terrible performance, but it is also far from the RTX 5070-class challenger some people once hoped for.
Once ray tracing or path tracing enters the picture, Intel’s card falls further behind the RTX 5060 Ti. That matters because modern AAA games are leaning harder into lighting features, upscaling, and frame generation ecosystems. For Malaysian PC gamers building a rig for Cyberpunk-style settings, future Unreal Engine 5 titles, or big esports-plus-streaming setups, raw raster performance alone is no longer the whole story.
The bigger issue is cost and chip size. The G31 GPU is huge: 368 mm² on a TSMC N5-class node. Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti uses the GB206 chip, which is only 181 mm² on a similar process. Smaller chips are cheaper to make, easier to sell at mainstream prices, and generally make more sense for gaming cards.
That comparison is brutal for Intel. Nvidia’s RTX 5070 chip, GB205, is 263 mm², while the RTX 5080’s GB203 is 378 mm² — only slightly bigger than Intel’s G31. So Intel is using near-RTX 5080-sized silicon but getting RTX 5060 Ti-style gaming performance. From a business angle, you can see why Intel did not push this as a consumer gaming GPU.
Instead, the Arc Pro B70 ships as a professional-style card with 32GB of VRAM, aimed more at local AI workloads than gaming. PC Gamer notes the card sits around US$1,000, which is roughly RM4,700 before Malaysian taxes, shipping, and retailer margins. For that kind of money, Malaysian gamers would expect a very strong 1440p or even entry 4K card — not something trading blows with a mid-range Nvidia option.
There is one fair caveat: Intel probably has not tuned G31 gaming drivers as aggressively as it would for a proper Arc gaming release. But even then, the numbers suggest the gap is too big to solve with software magic. G31 has 32 Xe cores compared to G21’s 20, a 60% increase on paper. Yet in the benchmark results, it is only 34% faster than G21 in raster games. Meanwhile, the RTX 5070 sits 87% ahead.
So yeah, better drivers might improve things, but they would not suddenly turn this into an RTX 5070 killer. For SEA gamers, the takeaway is simple: Intel is still worth watching, especially because the Arc B580 showed the company can offer interesting value. But this bigger Battlemage chip looks more useful for AI and workstation buyers than for everyday gaming rigs.
A proper Intel gaming comeback still needs the same thing Malaysian PC builders always care about: strong performance per ringgit. The Arc Pro B70, at least from these early gaming benchmarks, does not look like that card.
Source: PC Gamer
