Intel Iris Pro 5200 Graphics Review: Core i7-4950HQ Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 1, 2013 10:01 AM ESTMetro: Last Light
Metro: Last Light is the latest entry in the Metro series of post-apocalyptic shooters by developer 4A Games. Like its processor, Last Light is a game that sets a high bar for visual quality, and at its highest settings an equally high bar for system requirements thanks to its advanced lighting system. This doesn’t preclude it from running on iGPUs thanks to the fact that it scales down rather well, but it does mean that we have to run at fairly low resolutions to get a playable framerate.
Metro is a pretty heavy game to begin with, but Iris Pro starts off with an extremely good showing here. In its 55W configuration, Iris Pro is only 5% slower than the GeForce GT 650M. At 47W the gap is larger at 11% however. At 1366 x 768 the difference seems less memory bandwidth related and has more to do with efficiency of the graphics hardware itself.
The comparison to mobile Trinity is a walk in the park for Iris Pro. Even a 100W desktop Trinity part is appreciably slower here.
Increasing the resolution and quality settings changes things quite a bit. The 650M pulls ahead, and now the Iris Pro 5200 basically equals the performance of the GT 640. Intel claims a very high hit rate on the L4 cache, however it could be that 50GB/s is just not enough bandwidth between the GPU and Crystalwell. The performance improvement compared to all other processor graphics solutions, regardless of TDP, is still well in favor of Iris Pro. The i7-4950HQ holds a 50% advantage over the desktop i7-4770K and is almost 2x the speed of the i7-3770K.
Comparing mobile to mobile, Iris Pro delivers over 2x the frame rate of Trinity.
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Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
The performance isn't earth-shattering, but if Intel manages to put out good open-source Linux drivers for Iris Pro, I can't help but feel like this would be a great chip for that; it isn't like you'll be playing Crysis in Ubuntu anytime soon. I kind of want that CRB (or something like it), actually.tviceman - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
I'll bet notebooks with mid-range quad core CPU's and gt 750m discrete graphics will be cheaper than notebooks with Iris Pro enabled iGPU graphics as well. The only benefit would be a slightly slimmer chassis and battery life. Anyone who still wants to game on a notebook is noticeably better off with a mid-range discrete GPU over this.esterhasz - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
On page four, the ominous launch partner is not "keen" rather than "key", I guess. I'd be very keen on having that rMBP 13" with IP5200, though.Ryan Smith - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Noted and fixed. Thank you.tipoo - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
I'm very much in that boat too, a quad core 13" rMBP with Iris Pro would put it over the top.MattVincent - Wednesday, June 12, 2013 - link
totally agree. I wonder if apple will actually put a quad core in the 13" though. I bet they would rather sell more 15" rmbp'sjeffkibuule - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Would a 47W chip be able to fit into a normal 13" Ultrabook-like chassis like the 13" MacBook Pro with Retina Display? Only an extra 12W TDP to deal with.esterhasz - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
This would be awesome and we have to remember that the 47W TDP includes voltage regulation moving off the MB, so the gap is maybe only 8W. The 47 TDP also refers to both CPU and GPU running at full speed, which is an extremely rare scenario - in gaming, the CPU load will probably hover at 50% only.In any case, if the tested model goes into a rMBP 13" I'm going to buy it before Tim Cook has left the stage.
nofumble62 - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Thinking to buy a Ivybridge Mac Book Pro for my wife, I guess she will have wait a little longer for this baby. I wish they could fit in a Mac Book Air.jeffkibuule - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Look at the price of those chips though, you're going to be dropping at least $2000 on such a laptop when the CPU alone is $478.