Intel HD Graphics 500 vs Intel UHD Graphics (Elkhart Lake 16 EU)

Intel HD Graphics 500

The Intel HD Graphics 500 is an integrated processor graphics unit from the Apollo Lake generation (e. g. Celeron N3450 and Celeron N3350), which was announced mid 2016. The GPU can convince with low consumption figures, but the performance is only in the low-end segment and is rarely sufficient for modern games. Being a partial configuration of the Apollo Lake GPU, the HD Graphics 505 is equipped with just 12 Execution Units (EUs) (HD Graphics 505: 18 EUs) running at up to 650-700 MHz depending on the model. The technical specifications of the GPU are based on Intel's Gen9 architecture, which is also used for the more expensive Skylake series.

Due to its lack of dedicated graphics memory or eDRAM cache, the HD 505 has to access the main memory via processor (2x 64bit DDR3L-/LPDDR3-1866, LPDDR4-2400).

Performance

The HD Graphics 505 should be slightly slower than the older Broadwell GPU HD Graphics (Broadwell), so modern games (as of 2016) will rarely run smoothly even at the lowest settings.

Features

The revised video engine now decodes H.265/HEVC completely in hardware and thereby much more efficiently than before. Up to three displays can be connected via DP/eDP or HDMI (4K probably only at 30 Hz via HDMI 1.4).

Power Consumption

The TDP of the whole Pentium N4200 chip is 6 Watts by default, so the GPU is primarily used for (often passively cooled) netbooks or thin notebooks. The TDP can also be reduced to 4 Watts, but this will obviously affect the performance.

Intel UHD Graphics (Elkhart Lake 16 EU)

The Intel UHD Graphics 16EUs Elkhart Lake (Gen. 11) is an integrated graphics card (iGPU) in the Elkhart Lake Pentium and Celeron SoCs (e.g., Celeron N6211). It was announced in early 2021 and is used in the low end Elkhart Lake CPUs. It uses 16 of the 32 execution units and offers no dedicated graphics memory. The clock speed depends on the CPU model and ranges from 250 MHz (minimal base clock speed) up to 850 MHz (highest Boost clock).

The gaming performance is very low and even low demanding games like Dota 2 in our review were not fluently playable in minimal settings.