Gaming: Integrated Graphics

Despite being the ultimate joke at any bring-your-own-computer event, gaming on integrated graphics can ultimately be as rewarding as the latest mega-rig that costs the same as a car. The desire for strong integrated graphics in various shapes and sizes has waxed and waned over the years, with Intel relying on its latest ‘Gen’ graphics architecture while AMD happily puts its Vega architecture into the market to swallow up all the low-end graphics card sales. With Intel poised to make an attack on graphics in the next few years, it will be interesting to see how the graphics market develops, especially integrated graphics.

For our integrated graphics testing, we take our ‘IGP’ category settings for each game and loop the benchmark round for five minutes a piece, taking as much data as we can from our automated setup.

IGP: World of Tanks, Average FPS IGP: Final Fantasy XV, Average FPS

Finally, looking at integrated graphics performance, I don’t believe anyone should be surprised here. Intel has not meaningfully changed their iGPU since Kaby Lake – the microarchitecture is the same and the peak GPU frequency has risen by all of 50MHz to 1200MHz – so Intel’s iGPU results have essentially been stagnant for the last couple of years at the top desktop segment.

To that end I don’t think there’s much new to say. Intel’s GT2 iGPU struggles even at 720p in some of these games; it’s not an incapable iGPU, but there’s sometimes a large gulf between it and what these games (which are multi-platform console ports) expect for minimum GPU performance. The end result is that if you’re serious about iGPU performance in your desktop CPU, then AMD’s APUs provide much better performance. That said, if you are forced to game on the 9900K’s iGPU, then at least the staples of the eSports world such as World of Tanks will run quite well.

Gaming: F1 2018 Power Consumption
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  • Total Meltdowner - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link

    Those typoes..

    "Good, F U foreigners who want our superior tech."
  • muziqaz - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link

    Same to you, who still thinks that Intel CPUs are made purely in USA :D
  • Hifihedgehog - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    What do I think? That it is a deliberate act of desperation. It looks like it may draw more power than a 32-Core ThreadRipper per your own charts.

    https://i.redd.it/iq1mz5bfi5t11.jpg
  • AutomaticTaco - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link

    Revised
    https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen...

    The motherboard in question was using an insane 1.47v
    https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/105342741705...
    https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/105339755111...
  • edzieba - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    For the last decade, you've had the choice between "I want really fast cores!" and "I want lots of cores!". This is the 'now you can have both' CPU, and it's surprisingly not in the HEDT realm.
  • evernessince - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link

    It's priced like HEDT though. It's priced well into HEDT. FYI, you could have had both of those when the 1800X dropped.
  • mapesdhs - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link

    I noticed initially in the UK the pricing of the 9900K was very close to the 7820X, but now pricing for the latter has often been replaced on retail sites with CALL. Coincidence? It's almost as if Intel is trying to hide that even Intel has better options at this price level.
  • iwod - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    Nothing unexpected really. 5Ghz with "better" node that is tuned for higher Frequency. The TDP was the real surprise though, I knew the TDP were fake, but 95 > 220W? I am pretty sure in some countries ( um... EU ) people can start suing Intel for misleading customers.

    For the AVX test, did the program really use AMD's AVX unit? or was it not optimised for AMD 's AVX, given AMD has a slightly different ( I say saner ) implementation. And if they did, the difference shouldn't be that big.

    I continue to believe there is a huge market for iGPU, and I think AMD has the biggest chance to capture it, just looking at those totally playable 1080P frame-rate, if they could double the iGPU die size budget with 7nm Ryzen it would be all good.

    Now we are just waiting for Zen 2.
  • GreenReaper - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    It's using it. You can see points increased in both cases. But AMD implemented AVX on the cheap. It takes twice the cycles to execute AVX operations involving 256-bit data, because (AFAIK) it's implemented using 128-bit registers, with pairs of units that can only do multiplies or adds, not both.

    That may be the smart choice; it probably saves significant space and power. It might also work faster with SSE[2/3/4] code, still heavily used (in part because Intel has disabled AVX support on its lower-end chips). But some workloads just won't perform as well vs. Intel's flexible, wider units. The same is true for AVX-512, where the workstation chips run away with it.

    It's like the difference between using a short bus, a full-sized school bus, and a double decker - or a train. If you can actually fill the train on a regular basis, are going to go a long way on it, and are willing to pay for the track, it works best. Oh, and if developers are optimizing AVX code for *any* CPU, it's almost certainly Intel, at least first. This might change in the future, but don't count on it.
  • emn13 - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link

    Those AVX numbers look like they're measuing something else; not just AVX512. You'd expect performance to increase (compared to AVX256) by around 50%, give or take quite a margin of error. It should *never* be more than a factor 2 faster. So ignore AMD; their AVX implementation is wonky, sure - but those intel numbers almost have to be wrong. I think the baseline isn't vectorized at all, or something like that - that would explain the huge jump.

    Of course, AVX512 is fairly complicated, and it's more than just wider - but these results seem extraordinary; and there' just not enough evidence the effect is real, not just some quirk of how the variations were compiled.

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