8-core, 16-thread Rocket Lake CPU appears on Geekbench: 32 EU desktop Xe graphics deliver 40 percent lower OpenCL score than Vega 10 in 15W AMD Ryzen 7 3700U

An 8-core, 16-thread Intel Rocket Lake S desktop processor showed up on GeekBench with a truly disappointing OpenCL GPU score. The chip’s 32 EU Xe GPU was nearly 40 percent slower than the Vega 10 integrated graphics found in AMD’s 15W, ultra-low voltage Renoir Ryzen 7 3700U APU.

While this is an entry-level Xe configuration, and while final desktop performance might be higher than that of engineering samples, this OpenCL test does no favours to claims that Intel Xe will offer significant improvements to graphics performance.

To put this number into perspective, the Rocket Lake S engineering sample here actually scored slightly lower than the Intel Iris Plus 650 GPU found in the 7th-gen Kaby Lake U CPUs in the same GeekBench OpenCL test. 

It is relevant to note here that the Xe GPU was running at just 1.15 GHz. While competing iGPUs from AMD run as high as 1700 MHz and beyond, Intel’s own Ice Lake Gen11 parts top out at around 1100 MHz. Unless Intel plans to ramp clocks up substantially, these numbers paint a worrying picture about Gen12 Rocket Lake S GPU performance.