AMD Radeon 780M iGPU analysis - AMD's new RDNA-3 GPU takes on its competitors

Now, we will start with the well-known synthetic 3DMarks, which tackle its pure DirectX performance. In the old 3DMark 11, we measured a slight lead ahead of the old Radeon 680M - but in the 3DMark tests Fire Strike, Time Spy & WildLife Extreme, it lay only a little ahead and at the end of the day, their performances were pretty identical.

Update May 5th: The Radeon 780M with LPDDR5-6400 memory (in the following table mentioned as Radeon 780M without model designation) is between 4 and up to 9 % faster than the Radeon 780M with DDR5-4800 memory in the 3DMark tests.

We measured improved performance levels during our ray tracing test Port Royal - here, the new Radeon 780M lay 55 per cent ahead of the old Radeon 680M. On the other hand, its gaming performance was all-in-all too low to use ray tracing. Its OpenGL performance improved in multiple tests - here, we saw improvements of up to 20 per cent compared to the 680M.

We tested the Radeon 780M using a selection of older games and some new ones - here, the results were overall also a little disappointing, as we only identified the new iGPU as having a clear advantage in a few games, such as Cyberpunk 2077. Often, the 780M and the 680M did similarly well, which means the small dedicated GeForce MX550 still has a clear advantage for playing games. 

Next, we will be using Witcher 3 to analyze its efficiency, as the CPU has a comparatively small influence on this game. Furthermore, we took our measurements using an external monitor in order to rule out the internal display as an influencing factor. Comparing it to the current Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 14 is especially interesting - the Ryzen 7 7735HS with its Radeon 680M uses similar power limits. We just saw how little a difference there was between their gaming performance - the same thing can be said for efficiency. We are curious as to whether the coming U series CPUs will bring any improvements.

We would also like to take a quick look at the built-in video decoder. It interests us to see how highly the iGPU is loaded, for example when playing high-quality video. Last year's Radeon 680M (~4 per cent on YouTube at 4K) already did much better than Intel's iGPUs - their GPU load lay at around 44 per cent. This advantage became apparent in many of our laptop tests where we tested their battery life in our video test - here, the AMD models generally did better. Seemingly, nothing has changed when it comes to the new Radeon 780M - its GPU load remains very similar.

All-in-all, our first results after testing the new Radeon 780M are somewhat sobering - while gaming, we only noted a marginal lead ahead of the old Radeon 680M. The conditions were not the best due to the slow RAM, so we will add to this article as soon as we get our hands on new test devices. However, since AMD have since announced that the Radeon 780M's maximum clock rate will be 2.7 GHz instead of 2.8 GHz (like in our test device), the increased performance might prove to be a struggle, even when using faster RAM.

Gaming performance is also still a little rocky. Generally, the 780M is about on the same level as the old 680M, but there are outliers in both directions. We assume that AMD will improve the situation by releasing some new driver updates. Its ray tracing could definitely do with some improvements, although due to its overall minimal performance level, you can pretty much forget RT when you are playing games. 

During the first benchmarks, the new Radeon 780M is about on the same level as the old Radeon 680M. So, it still has a clear advantage over Intel's iGPUs - but nothing changes about it trailing behind Apple's M2 GPUs.

On the whole, the launch of the new Zen4 Phoenix APUs - along with the new Radeon 780M - has been anything but perfect so far. We are still being surprised by new information (such as the 780M's reduced clock rate). Test devices are scarce goods, but now there are at least a few devices with the new HS CPUs on the market (where the iGPU doesn't actually play that big a role due to dedicated GPUs). We have yet to see a trace of the first U series chips such as the Ryzen 7 7840U and we have no idea if there will even be any first test devices. Currently, it seems as if gaming handhelds like the coming ROG Ally are being favored. Last year, the availability of Zen3+ models was already quite scarce and only now are they being brought out in larger numbers as the newly named Ryzen 7000 models. We can only hope that the Zen4 chips will not suffer the same fate.