Intel Arc B580 Graphics Open-Source Driver Linux Gaming Performance Review

Last week Intel announced the Arc B-Series Battlemage graphics cards as their first Xe2 discrete GPUs. Ahead of the Arc B580 graphics card hitting Internet retailers tomorrow, today the review embargo lifts on the Intel Arc B580. Here is what to expect from the Linux driver support at launch for the Intel Battlemage graphics cards and how the Arc B580 is performing for Linux gaming/graphics workloads.

I have been covering the Battlemage / Xe2 Linux graphics driver enablement work for months now so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there is Linux support at launch… Not only is there open-source, upstream Linux support for the Intel Arc B580 Graphics at launch-time but it’s comparatively much better than when the DG2/Alchemist Arc A-Series graphics cards were first shipping.

While with time the Intel Arc A-Series graphics cards have matured quite well on Linux over the past two years, when those prior generation graphics cards first shipped the Intel graphics driver support was much more premature. The Intel graphics driver code was still being adapted for the notion of dedicated video memory and other changes as a result of entering the discrete GPU space, the Intel Xe kernel mode driver was still being developed as the successor to the long-used i915 kernel DRM driver, and the Iris OpenGL and ANV Vulkan driver support was simply not as mature as it is now.

Those wanting to use Intel Battlemage graphics on Linux will still need to resort to using a very recent Linux kernel and Mesa drivers, but it’s at least all upstream for launch and much more mature than it was at the time for Alchemist. For those planning to buy an Intel Arc B580 graphics card tomorrow, you will need to be at least on the Linux 6.12 stable kernel for that’s the first mainline kernel where Xe2 graphics are enabled out-of-the-box and all the necessary bits are in place. But if you don’t mind a bit living on the edge, the Linux 6.13 Git kernel has even more Intel Xe2/Battlemage improvements.

Over on the Mesa driver side you will want to be using the fresh Mesa 24.3 stable series and if wanting to enjoy the most optimal performance and features there is Mesa 25.0-devel Git that can be easily consumed via the likes of the Oibaf PPA on Ubuntu. In the past two weeks Intel engineers have landed more Battlemage performance tuning patches to Mesa Git, so you’ll want to be sure to be running the very latest Mesa 24.3 point release or Mesa Git when you get around to setting up an Intel Arc B580 graphics card.

The GPU firmware support for Battlemage is already upstream in linux-firmware.git, so all is good there as well. The latest Intel Compute Runtime release from GitHub is also working on Battlemage for those interested in Level Zero / OpenCL support. A separate article today dives into the Intel Arc B580 GPU compute performance.