In a surprising turn of events, the Intel Arc B570 GPU has shipped a month ahead of its official launch date due to a retailer error. A lucky gamer managed to get their hands on the card and successfully modified existing drivers to make it work.
Early Release Due to Retailer Mix-Up
A German retailer had initially announced preorders for Intel's new Battlemage GPU with a launch date of January 16th, only to later confirm the card was already in stock. Due to a mix-up, the cards were shipped to customers ahead of schedule.
A user on the PC Games Hardware forum, “Cross-Flow,” received an ASRock Arc B570 Challenger but faced a challenge due to the lack of official drivers. He bypassed this issue by force-installing the existing B580 driver, ignoring checksum errors through Device Manager. He experimented with "every executable file in the directory" until a driver was installed that worked, albeit not perfectly.
Modified Driver Results
The system recognized the GPU as "Arc B580," but with 10GB of memory, which is consistent with the B570's specifications. It displayed 15 Xe2 cores instead of the expected 18 cores. The user reported that the card works in games, has normal idle power draw across multiple monitors, and supports AMD FreeSync.
"Under Windows 10...everything works so far. FreeSync in fullscreen and windowed modes works. Games (WoW Classic, Deus Ex 3 & 4—briefly tested) also work." - Cross-Flow
Interestingly, other forum members have also stated they are expecting to receive their B570 cards within days, suggesting this shipping mistake is widespread. This raises questions about the value of the review embargo given the cards are already in the hands of consumers. The B580 cards, are currently difficult to find due to high demand, possibly contributing to the reasoning behind the official launch delay, to allow more stock to be manufactured.
