Intel ARC B580 GPU - APB Reloaded

[Uhtdred 249]

Anyone has this GPU? If you have it, can you tell me if it's working properly while playing APB? I plan to replace my GTX 1650 Super with this new GPU.

Edited April 3 by Uhtdred

[Deadliest 393]

Makes 0 difference when playing apb.

 

you want real performance gain go with 

 

amd ryzen 7 9800xD

 

500+fps

[Uhtdred 249]

8 hours ago, Deadliest said:

Makes 0 difference when playing apb.

 

you want real performance gain go with 

 

amd ryzen 7 9800xD

 

500+fps

I have ryzen 5 7600 and because I play with very low graphics I already average 400-500fps, but my question was if there's anything wrong about this gpu especifically with APB, since it's a very new GPU.

[sweetLemonade 125]

20 hours ago, Uhtdred said:

Anyone has this GPU? If you have it, can you tell me if it's working properly while playing APB? I plan to replace my GTX 1650 Super with this new GPU.

Arc/Battlemage GPUs do not perform well in OpenGL & D3D9–D3D11 (DX9–DX11) titles due to their driver overhead penalty.
APB is a D3D9 title, all effects render on the CPU.
The driver causes massive stuttering even in CPU-limited scenarios, where the GPU usage is low. This is just a driver software limitation, perhaps a architectural limitation to some extent as well since Intel focused (& still focuses solely) on D3D12 (DX12) performance only. Even Vulkan was subpar on Arc & Battlemage cards, last time I checked.

I would, instead, recommend you to go for a ≥12GB VRAM Nvidia GPU, at minimum Ampere (30-series) architecture or newer.
There's a reason their usage market share is that large.

Edited April 4 by sweetLemonade

[Uhtdred 249]

yup, massive stuttering. DO NOT BUY Intel arc b580 if you wan't to play APB, gonna have to replace the GPU or quit apb for ever tbh

Edited April 14 by Uhtdred

[Mitne 732]

On 4/4/2025 at 7:43 PM, sweetLemonade said:

Arc/Battlemage GPUs do not perform well in OpenGL & D3D9–D3D11 (DX9–DX11) titles due to their driver overhead penalty.
APB is a D3D9 title, all effects render on the CPU.
The driver causes massive stuttering even in CPU-limited scenarios, where the GPU usage is low. This is just a driver software limitation, perhaps a architectural limitation to some extent as well since Intel focused (& still focuses solely) on D3D12 (DX12) performance only. Even Vulkan was subpar on Arc & Battlemage cards, last time I checked.

I would, instead, recommend you to go for a ≥12GB VRAM Nvidia GPU, at minimum Ampere (30-series) architecture or newer.
There's a reason their usage market share is that large.

Intel does want to focus on backward compatibility so that diagnosis will be hopefully not true in future.

[Uhtdred 249]

looks like it has some cache issues, there are a lot of fps drop until map is fully loaded...

[Weaboos 90]

On 4/4/2025 at 12:15 AM, Uhtdred said:

Anyone has this GPU? If you have it, can you tell me if it's working properly while playing APB? I plan to replace my GTX 1650 Super with this new GPU.

Ave, you are in luck.

 

I've tested two PCs running Win 11 with two different Intel Arc B580 cards one being the reference model and the other being a Sparkle OC model. Both PCs were using midrange Ryzen CPUs, one was using Ryzen 5 7600X and the other was with the 7600 non X. With maxed graphics @1440p the game is an unplayable stuttery mess that eventually led to CTD. There was also some kind of weird faint shadowy artifact on the left side on the screen, most visible when driving a vehicle and looking at the ground. Naturally such things are expected when buying a GPU from a new player in the GPU market but considering how good of a value this card is when you can get it at or close to MSRP I've decided to accept such risks.  I've decided to mess around with the configs just to test a what if scenario and was blown away with what I ended up with.

 

My game went from being unplayable to smooth 160-320 fps with maxed graphics @1440p (no AA as that really hurts fps for whatever reason). Having messed around with configs in the past with minimal gains on older PCs I would be extremely skeptical if someone claimed such massive gains but the words I speak are true.

 

Credit to jmiIos for originally discovering this. Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20230318201509/https://forums.gamersfirst.com/topic/19594-engine-upgrade-just-went-live/

 

What I did:

 

 

THE MOST IMPORTANT ONES (+20-30FPS)

BaseEngine.ini

bUseTextureStreaming=False
bUseLightingTextureStreaming=False

UnStreamAllTextures=True

DefaultEngine.ini

m_bUseDiskCache=False

DefaultGame.ini

m_bCalculateOnServer=false

APBCompat.ini

add these in "videoquality" preset that you use (1-minimum)

MaxSystemMemoryUsedByTextureStreaming=1
MaxVideoMemoryUsedByTextureStreaming=1

also add them in each AppHWConstraintsBucket

 

Reduced stutters + more stable FPS

BaseEngine.ini

TimeBetweenPurgingPendingKillObjects=120


GarbageCollectionMemoryCeilingGb= Value based on your RAM (4gb=4, 8gb=8..)
 

 

 

There are more settings to mess around with but I did not touch the others as these seem to do give the most benefit. If you've never messed around with configs you will need to launch the game from APB.EXE and not from the launcher. Also consider setting a high fps cap as in my case I was sliding around 1 m as soon as I stopped and reached the fps cap of 170, and when I increased it to 300 fps I would start sliding 10 m at a time. I've set the fps cap to 500 have have not slid since.

 

Visually the game is unchanged from max graphics, however the previously mentioned faint shadowy artifact still remains, this seems to be an Intel specific bug and so far I've seen it on 3 B580 cards that were used to play this game. To conclude you might not get a better experience using this card to play APB but you will easily be able to run modern titles such as Cyberpunk. On a side note if you are one of those people who never turns off his PC consider restarting it before your APB session at least as one of my friends had some weird stutters in APB that were fixed by restarting his PC (B580 card and a 13th gen Intel i7).

Edited Thursday at 07:08 PM by Weaboos

[Uhtdred 249]

2 hours ago, Weaboos said:

Ave, you are in luck.

 

I've tested two PCs running Win 11 with two different Intel Arc B580 cards one being the reference model and the other being a Sparkle OC model. Both PCs were using midrange Ryzen CPUs, one was using Ryzen 5 7600X and the other was with the 7600 non X. With maxed graphics @1440p the game is an unplayable stuttery mess that eventually led to CTD. There was also some kind of weird faint shadowy artifact on the left side on the screen, most visible when driving a vehicle and looking at the ground. Naturally such things are expected when buying a GPU from a new player in the GPU market but considering how good of a value this card is when you can get it at or close to MSRP I've decided to accept such risks.  I've decided to mess around with the configs just to test a what if scenario and was blown away with what I ended up with.

 

My game went from being unplayable to smooth 160-320 fps with maxed graphics @1440p (no AA as that really hurts fps for whatever reason). Having messed around with configs in the past with minimal gains on older PCs I would be extremely skeptical if someone claimed such massive gains but the words I speak are true.

 

Credit to jmiIos for originally discovering this. Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20230318201509/https://forums.gamersfirst.com/topic/19594-engine-upgrade-just-went-live/

 

What I did:

  Hide contents

 

THE MOST IMPORTANT ONES (+20-30FPS)

BaseEngine.ini

bUseTextureStreaming=False
bUseLightingTextureStreaming=False

UnStreamAllTextures=True

DefaultEngine.ini

m_bUseDiskCache=False

DefaultGame.ini

m_bCalculateOnServer=false

APBCompat.ini

add these in "videoquality" preset that you use (1-minimum)

MaxSystemMemoryUsedByTextureStreaming=1
MaxVideoMemoryUsedByTextureStreaming=1

also add them in each AppHWConstraintsBucket

 

Reduced stutters + more stable FPS

BaseEngine.ini

TimeBetweenPurgingPendingKillObjects=120


GarbageCollectionMemoryCeilingGb= Value based on your RAM (4gb=4, 8gb=8..)
 

 

 

There are more settings to mess around with but I did not touch the others as these seem to do give the most benefit. If you've never messed around with configs you will need to launch the game from APB.EXE and not from the launcher. Also consider setting a high fps cap as in my case I was sliding around 1 m as soon as I stopped and reached the fps cap of 170, and when I increased it to 300 fps I would start sliding 10 m at a time. I've set the fps cap to 500 have have not slid since.

 

Visually the game is unchanged from max graphics, however the previously mentioned faint shadowy artifact still remains, this seems to be an Intel specific bug and so far I've seen it on 3 B580 cards that were used to play this game. To conclude you might not get a better experience using this card to play APB but you will easily be able to run modern titles such as Cyberpunk. On a side note if you are one of those people who never turns off his PC consider restarting it before your APB session at least as one of my friends had some weird stutters in APB that were fixed by restarting his PC (B580 card and a 13th gen Intel i7).

thank you!! I will try it!

[Weaboos 90]

No worries.

 

Another issue discovered I have. When customizing vehicles, swapping car parts and changing color seems fine but if I start messing with symbols, adding rotating them etc the game quite often crashes and I am presented with a send/don't send report button. I have not yet tested clothing but I imagine the result will be the same. My current workaround is not change symbols on the B580, if I need to do that I fire up my old laptop with GTX 1050 Ti, not ideal nothing I can do until this gets patched if ever or a fix emerges...

Edited yesterday at 10:11 AM by Weaboos