AMD's Richland vs. Intel's Haswell GPU on the Desktop: Radeon HD 8670D vs. Intel HD 4600
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 6, 2013 12:00 PM ESTFinal Words
Despite Haswell's arrival on the desktop, AMD is in no trouble at all from a graphics perspective. At the high end, Richland maintains a 17 - 50% GPU performance advantage (~30% on average) over Intel's HD 4600 (Haswell GT2). All things equal, even Trinity is good enough to maintain this performance advantage - a clear downside of Intel not bringing its Iris or Iris Pro graphics to any socketed desktop parts.
While there isn't a substantial increase in GPU performance between Richland and Trinity, AMD's GPU performance lead over Ivy Bridge was big enough to withstand Haswell's arrival. Note that although we're comparing performance to Haswell here, Richland exists in a lower price bracket. If you want the best desktop solution with processor graphics, AMD remains your best bet.
Later this year we'll see the arrival of Kaveri, which will be AMD's true response to Iris as well as its first HSA enabled APU. For as long as I can remember, integrated graphics was one of the most frustrating aspects of PC hardware to test. It looks like that's finally about to change.
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FriendlyUser - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
I see your point. But how many of these users need the CPU performance of the 4770? Do you think that the average business user needs a 4770 to do excel and answer emails? Will he even notice the difference? I can't really show you statistics, but I imagine that a big part of demanding users are in fact gamers.JDG1980 - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
I understand why the average Intel CPU has an integrated graphics processor, but the K-series parts are specifically targeted at enthusiasts. Why don't they omit the IGP from those?Gigaplex - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
QuickSync is one possible answer. Another is that enthusiasts tend to swap out GPUs more frequently than other demographics so having a basic iGPU can come in handy for diagnostics now and then. And not all enthusiasts are gamers.dbcoopernz - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
Are you going to look at HTPC performance for Richland? e.g. madVR, refresh rate timings.RoyYoung - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
Thanks for the squeezing this out in such a short turn around. However I just don't think this is useful or new. I have never met anyone in the market for an i7 xxxxk cpu looking to play AAA game using the iGPU, have you? The iGPU in the i7 is just a bonus because it shares a die with the mobile counterpart, and gives you quick sync if prefer speed over quality in your transcoding.In today's market, the only reason to invest in the space, noise , heat, and money for a desktop gaming PC is to play games at 1080p or higher. Just get a Xbox if you need 720p. From the benchmarks its clear that neither the i-7 Haswell nor the Richland are playable at 900p let alone 1080p. On the other hand, the same tests at 768p on mobile Richland and Haswell parts makes perfect sense given the typical resolution and thermal of laptops. Given the power usage delta between the AMD and Intel desktop parts, I suspect the race is going to be a lot closer in the laptop race.
kallogan - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
Richland is really lame. I mean it brings barely peanuts over Trinty. Why even release that. And it's expensive. Desktop parts are really boring right now.kyuu - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
I'd be interested in seeing if you can get a stable RAM clock @ 2400MHz, and if so, how much Richland scales with that. Hope you take a look at when you do the more thorough piece.johnny_boy - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
APUs scale very well with faster memory almost regardless of timings. I'd like to see Richland benchmarks with DDR3 2400, though I can already make a pretty good guess of what those figures would look like.Samastrike - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
So what I'm seeing here is very similar GPU performance to trinity for $20 more? Except in 3Dmark06 where it suddenly has a huge jump. Doesn't strike me as worth it.firewall597 - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
I'm a little disappointed that AMD cared to release this as a new model generation at all. There's barely enough argument to avoid throwing the "rebranding" flag. Shoulda just fit the upclocked parts appropriately into the current gen's numbering and adjusted prices accordingly.The effort is appreciated always, but the marketing is somewhat misleading from the surface.