Intel HD Graphics P530 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 vs Intel HD Graphics 2500

Intel HD Graphics P530

The Intel HD Graphics P530 (GT2) is an integrated graphics unit, which can be found in various Xeon workstation processors of the Skylake generation. The "GT2" version of the Skylake GPU offers 24 Execution Units (EUs) clocked at up to 1050 MHz (depending on the CPU model). Due to its lack of dedicated graphics memory or eDRAM cache, the P530 has to access the main memory (2x 64bit DDR3L-1600 / DDR4-2133).

Performance

Depending on the memory configuration, the HD Graphics P530 is just slightly behind a dedicated GeForce 920M and will handle modern games (as of 2015) in low or medium settings.

Features

The revised video engine now decodes H.265/HEVC completely in hardware and thereby much more efficiently than before. Displays can be connected via DP 1.2 / eDP 1.3 (max. 3840 x 2160 @ 60 Hz), whereas HDMI is limited to the older version 1.4a (max. 3840 x 2160 @ 30 Hz). However, HDMI 2.0 can be added using a DisplayPort converter. Up to three displays can be controlled simultaneously.

Power Consumption

The HD Graphics P530 can be found in mobile quad-core Xeon processors with 45 W TDP.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580

Die NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 ist eine High-End Desktop Grafikkarte welche Ende 2010 vorgestellt wurde. Sie basiert auf den GF110 Fermi Chip im Vollausbau. Das heisst die 580 bietet 512 Shader, 64 Textureinheiten und 16 Polymorph Engines. As Besonderheit der Fermi Architektur werden die Shader doppelt so schnell getaktet wie der Rest des Chips (z.B. die Textureinheiten).

Die Leistung der GTX 580 liegt deutlich über der mobilen GeForce GTX 580M (welche eigentlich eine geringer getaktete GTX 560 Ti ist). Im Vergleich zur Konkurrenz liegt die GTX 580M etwa auf dem Niveau einer Radeon HD 7950. Die Nachfolgekarte der Kepler Generation namens GTX 680 kann sich mit etwa 30% Vorsprung deutlich absetzen.

Mit einem TDP von 244 Watt ist die GTX 580 eine der stromhungrigsten Grafikkarten und benötigt für den Betrieb ein starkes Netzteil.

Intel HD Graphics 2500

The Intel HD Graphics 2500 (or Ivy Bridge GT1) is an integrated graphics card in the Ivy Bridge codenamed desktop processors. It is the successor the the Intel HD Graphics 2000 in the Sandy Bridge CPUs and performs between the old HD 2000 and 3000 GPU (see benchmarks below). Usually it is used in the cheaper desktop Ivy bridge CPUs. The mobile version is simply called Intel HD Graphics and integrated in the Pentium and Celeron line.

Compared to the faster HD Graphics 4000, the 2500 one features less Execution Units (6 versus 16) and only one texture sampler. Therefore, the performance is clearly worse and only suited for low demanding gaming. Intel states a 10 to 15% higher performance compared to the old Sandy Bridge based HD Graphics 2000. Therefore, only older casual games with low requirements are playable with the HD 2500.

A speciality of the Ivy Bridge GPUs is that 4x MSAA is supported in hardware now. However, 2x is only supported through software.  The algorithm to support 2x is going through the 4x pipeline with a software algorithm, so performance is similar to 4x MSAA.

The integrated video decoder called Multi Format Codec Engine (MFX) was also improved and should allow even simultaneus 4K video decoding. DXVAChecker lists MPEG2, VC1, WMV9, and H264 as supported codecs. QuickSync for fast transcoding of videos was also optimized for higher performance and better image quality.

Another new feature is the support for up to 3 independent displays as AMD offers with theirs Eyefinity support (up to 6 displays).

Due to the 22nm 3D Tri-Gate production process, the power consumption is relatively low (the development was focused on performance per Watt).