Intel Iris Pro 5200 Graphics Review: Core i7-4950HQ Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 1, 2013 10:01 AM ESTSynthetics
Our synthetic benchmarks can sometimes tell us a lot about what an architecture is capable of. In this case, we do have some unanswered questions about why Intel falls short of the GT 650M in some cases but not in others. We'll turn to 3DMark Vantage first to stress ROP and texel rates.
Iris Pro doesn't appear to have a ROP problem, at least not in 3DMark Vantage. NVIDIA can output more pixels than Iris Pro though, so it's entirely possible that we're just not seeing any problems because we're looking at a synthetic test. Comparing the HD 4600 to the Iris Pro 5200 we see near perfect scaling in pixel throughput. Remember the ROP hardware is located in slice common, which is doubled when going from GT2 to GT3. Here we see a near doubling of pixel fillrate as a result.
Moving on, we have our 3DMark Vantage texture fillrate test, which does for texels and texture mapping units what the previous test does for ROPs.
Now this is quite interesting. NVIDIA has a 50% advantage in texturing performance, that's actually higher than what the raw numbers would indicate. It's entirely possible that this is part of what we're seeing manifest itself in some of the game benchmarks.
Finally we’ll take a quick look at tessellation performance with TessMark.
Iris Pro doesn't appear to have a geometry problem. Tessellation performance is very good.
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tipoo - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
I really hope so, the Retina Macbook Pro 13" would get a whole lot more appealing with quad core and Iris Pro.DanNeely - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Probably; easily if anand is right about Apple deciding it's good enough to drop the dGPU. Worst case would be Apple taking advantage of the adjustable TDP options to tune the CPU performance/tdp down a bit.Gaugamela - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Really impressive!This focus of Intel on graphics will force Nvidia and AMD to push dedicated GPUs forward at a much faster pace at the risk of being destroyed by Intel iGPUs. This couldn't come at a better time with the advent of high resolution screens in notebooks and displays (that new 4K Asus monitor).
AMD will need to bring Kaveri with a monster of a iGPU otherwise Intel just nullified the only area where they had any type of advantage.
Blibbax - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
I question how much more can be had from APU graphics with the bandwidth restrictions of 64-bit DDR3.silverblue - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Iris Pro is exceptionally good, however you have to ask how much faster the 7660D would be with the same memory bandwidth advantage. Additionally, Trinity is hardly going to be in the same sort of systems, and as the GPU is being held back by the CPU part anyway, it does take a little shine off Iris Pro's astounding performance. Even so, well done Intel, on both the hardware and software fronts.trulyuncouth1 - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
I think its kind of a moot point, Selling something this expensive will not affect AMD or even Nvidia that much. You can get an entire AMD APU based notebook for the cost of just this processor. I love the idea of this being pushed forward but unless Intel can bring it to a lower price point its kind of pointless.ilkhan - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Im probably unique in that I want a quad haswell with the 20EU graphics and a GTX760m dGPU from a latitude (dock!) E6540. Wonder if thats going to happen. Probably not.Still, this looks damn good for Intel and will only improve over time.
lmcd - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Howabout, rather, a 760 dGPU from a latitude dock? A bit more appealing :-)Zandros - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Performance roughly in line with expectations, although the compute performance is a nice surprise. It seems to me like Crystalwell is going into exactly the wrong SKUs and the pricing is borderline atrocious, too.Anyway, since you bring up the awards and a "new system" for them, something I've been thinking a bit about is how there doesn't seem to be a page on the site where it is explained what each award is supposed to mean and collects all the products that have received them, which I think would be nice.
kallogan - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Where is da power consumption ??????