Intel Iris Pro 5200 Graphics Review: Core i7-4950HQ Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 1, 2013 10:01 AM ESTImage Quality
Software compatibility and image quality remain understandable concerns, however Intel has improved tremendously in these areas over the past couple of years. I couldn't run Total War: Shogun 2 on Iris Pro, but other than that every other game I threw at the system ran without errors - a significant improvement over where things were not too long ago. On the compute side, I couldn't get our Folding@Home benchmark to work but otherwise everything else ran well.
On the image quality front I didn't see too much to be concerned about. I noticed some occasional texture flashing in Battlefield 3, but it was never something I was able to grab a screenshot of quickly enough. Intel seems pretty quick about addressing any issues that crop up and as a company it has considerably increased staffing/resources on the driver validation front.
The gallery below has a series of images taken from some of the benchmarks in our suite. I didn't notice any obvious differences between Intel and NVIDIA render quality. By virtue of experience and focus I expect software compatiblity, image quality and driver/hardware efficiency to be better on the NVIDIA side of the fence. At the same time, I have no reason to believe that Intel isn't serious about continuing to address those areas going forward. Intel as a company has gone from begging software developers to at least let their code run on Intel integrated graphics, to actively working with game developers to introduce new features and rendering techniques.
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arjunp2085 - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
I was under the impression that Richland has been selling on newegg as per a comment on an earlier article..I was also wondering since you had done a review on Richland from MSI notebook review i was wondering if you would do a similar comparison..
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6949/msi-gx70-3be-ri...
It would be appreciated just placing all the possible matches on the table and a paragraph with selection criteria for the review making the choices dispelling opinion of missing any models
GameHopper - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Why no real power measurements? If it's so important to iris Pro, real world power numbers will be more useful than just listing TDP of the partsshinkueagle - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
The GIANT has awoken! Performance-wise, its amazing! Destroys Trinity! Price-wise.... Well, the area needs some work...trip1ex - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Yes really disappointed there is no socketed cpu solution that have the best igpu config.But I suppose I already have Ivy Bridge i5 for my WMC pc and it is good enough. Still be a nice cheap way to build a secondary small desktop that could also do some light gaming.
Lataa - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
dikicha23@gmail.comvFunct - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Curious why Intel just doesn't go straight for the jugular and release a discrete GPU part on their 22nm process. NVidia/AMD is stuck at 28mm because of their foundries, and it appears Intel's GPU architecture is feature complete and therefore competitive with the discrete parts if they scaled up everything by 4x or 5x.NVidia & AMD should be worried about their core high-profit-margins business!
jamescox - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
The photo you have on page 4 showing the 2 separate die is strange. The haswell die should not be square. Other photos I have seen show the expected (extremely rectangular) haswell die and a tiny ram chip. I would expect a haswell based chip with double the cpu (8 real cores), and no gpu eventually; this would be almost square. Do you know why your chip does not match other multi-chip module photos online?jamescox - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
I guess the other photos are haswell plus an integrated chipset in the same module. The photo of the two die is still strange, as neither of these look like a haswell die.IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
That's because that's the picture for GT3e Iris Pro 5200 graphics. The bigger square die is the Haswell CPU+GT3 GPU, while the smaller one is the on-package DRAM.The dual core with on-package chipset is even longer than the regular Haswell.
tipoo - Wednesday, January 21, 2015 - link
Yes it should, you're thinking of the ultrabook chips with a controller to the side, not eDRAM. Those ones are rectangular. Look at a haswell MBP 15" teardown to verify.