Intel's "Battlemage" Goes Pro: Meet the Arc B60 & B50 for AI and Creators
Massive news from Computex 2025. Intel is finally turning serious with professional graphics and AI as it announces its new Arc Pro B60 and Arc Pro B50 GPUs. These are not just an upgrade; they are part of the "Battlemage" family, and they are arriving with plenty of VRAM for those that require it.
What's Cooking with the Arc Pro B60 and B50.
Intel is clearly targeting graphics workstations, AI inference workloads, and edge computing with these new cards. Let's take a look at what these two flagship products have to offer:
The Intel Arc Pro B60: Powerhouse with 24GB VRAM
This is the high-end offering, based on the full BMG-G21 GPU die. Here's a quick look at its muscle:
- Boasts 20 2nd Gen Xe cores and 160 XMX engines.
- Provides a peak compute throughput of 197 TOPS (INT8).
- Power usage is between 120W and 200W, via a Gen5 x8 PCIe interface.
- The real star of the show here is the memory: a whopping 24GB of VRAM on a 192-bit bus, providing 456 GB/s of bandwidth. That's double the VRAM of its gaming-focused cousin, the Arc B580.
Intel is comparing the Arc Pro B60 with competitors like the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and RTX 2000 Ada 16GB. They're claiming significant performance advantages, especially when dealing with larger AI models where that extra VRAM really shines.
Project Battlematrix: Multi-GPU Scaling for AI
Intel is not stopping at single cards. For those who are working on truly massive AI models, they're introducing "Project Battlematrix." It's an inference workstation platform that can support up to eight Intel Arc Pro AI GPUs simultaneously.
Think about it: the dual-GPU Arc Pro B60 cards will be available to select partners, with each GPU sporting its own 24GB, for 48GB per card. String a number of these together in a Battlematrix setup, and you could be looking at a staggering 192GB of VRAM and 1280 XMX engines. That configuration is aimed at addressing AI models over 70 billion parameters, all tuned for Xeon environments with PCIe Gen5. It will also have the backing of an LLM-optimized Linux software stack, which should see it become a compelling choice for heavy AI work.
The Intel Arc Pro B50: Value and Efficiency with 16GB VRAM
Intel seems particularly proud of the Arc Pro B50, and for good reason. It's going to be a "shining diamond" for value and efficiency.
- Features 16 Xe cores and 128 XMX Engines with 170 Peak TOPS (INT8).
- Runs at a lean 70W TBP and on a PCIe Gen5 x8 interface.
- Comes with a fairly decent 16GB of VRAM on a 128-bit bus (224.0 GB/s bandwidth).
- Designed to be low power and small in a dual-slot form factor.
- Linux and Windows ready, with both consumer and ISV-certified Pro drivers.
The big news. The Arc Pro B50 is targeting an MSRP of just $299. Intel believes that makes it a significantly better value than competing offerings, with up to a 3x performance boost over the previous-generation A50. They've shared benchmarks showing it beating both the A50 and NVIDIA's RTX A1000 in a variety of workloads.
Software and Availability
Intel is serious about the software side of things as well. They will be bringing in baseline Windows and Linux drivers with workstation ISV certification in Q2, along with inference-optimized containers and other GPU optimizations. Virtualization optimizations like SRIOV and VDI will come in Q4.
So when can you get your hands on them. Both the Arc Pro B60 and Arc Pro B50 are set to be available in Q3 this year, with customer sampling already underway. Initially, they'll ship within systems from leading workstation vendors. But a DIY release for enthusiasts may come around Q4, after software optimizations are completed.
As far as price goes, the Arc Pro B50 is aimed at that $299 MSRP, and the Arc Pro B60 will hit the $500 point, with complete systems featuring it aiming to be in the vicinity of the $5000 range.
