Intel's Arc graphic cards have made their debut in the Steam Hardware Survey just as I am getting excited about the new Battlemage B580 graphics card

Could it be that Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, who is under pressure, has fallen on his sword a little too soon? Intel's Arc gaming graphic cards have been featured for the first time in the Steam Hardware Survey. Intel's Arc B580 looks to be a great graphics card for gamers on a tight budget.

Can you imagine the jubilation at Intel's Santa Clara headquarters in California? Well, not quite. According to the November survey of Steam users PC hardware, Intel Arc graphics make up a small fraction of 0.19%.

This is still better than the 0.16% AMD Radeon RX7700 XT achieved and only slightly behind the 0.21% 7900 XT. These surveys include a wide variety of cards. Even the Nvidia RTX 3060 GPU, which is the most popular GPU, only accounts for 5% of the survey.

Moreover, older boards like the GTX1050 Ti, 1060, 1650 and the RTX2060 still rank remarkably high. It's not clear what Arc graphics are.

The listing simply says "Intel(R Arc(TM ) Graphics." Does this include the Arc A770 desktop graphics card? Could this be due to Intel Lunar Lake laptop chips, which have an Arc GPU integrated?

My best guess would be the latter. But I'm surprisingly excited about the new Arc B580 graphic card announced yesterday.

I was initially disappointed that it wasn't RTX 4070. Even a $500 GPU can be expensive for PC gamers. The B580 is available for $250 and comes with 12 GB of memory and a 192 bit memory bus.

This means that you won't have to worry as much about running out VRAM. The same cannot be said for an 8 GB RTX 4160. Intel has also improved the performance of its second-gen Battlemage GPU.

If Intel has made a good job with its drivers, then the B580 could be the 1440p killer GPU we've been waiting for. Now you can get a 1440p gaming screen for $250. Here's a GPU that is priced similarly.

There's still much to prove, but I am hopeful. But cautiously hopeful. But still hopeful. Watch this space soon for our review of B580. Cross your fingers. All your toes.