B580 Computerbase Review - and a discussion about consistency
My really short summary:
- Significant overall improvements over A580 (~40%) and A770 (~10-20%).
- Fewer driver problems than prior Intel launches, but still several.
- Improved energy efficiency, slightly more efficient in-game than AMD, less so than NV. Still not very efficient in idle/desktop usage.
- Price/performance (based on EU pricing) is decent, but not really much better than existing options in the same range.
Personally, I think the biggest remaining issue (and why I wouldn't recommend these to a general audience) is the fact that you can still quite easily run into a game that has severe problems. In the medium-sized test lineup of Computerbase there were 4 games that had severe issues (either rendering bugs or broken framepacing), only 2 of which Intel has since fixed.
I actually really want Intel to succeed, but I feel like some reviews and especially conclusions don't consider this consistency aspect enough. I can see someone who is not too deep into any of this get one of these, and then a game they really wanted to play releases and it ends up being one of the "bad ones" -- maybe for a few weeks, or maybe for a few months. I'm pretty sure that most consumers would rather have 5% less price/performance to avoid that scenario.