AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 vs Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 80EUs

AMD’s Radeon RX Vega 56 is a high-end desktop GPU that was first introduced in August of 2017. It is based on the Vega architecture (Vega 10) and equipped with fast HBM2 VRAM. When it was first introduced, it was the second fastest AMD GPU available, only bested by the RX Vega 64 that launched on the very same day. At the time of writing, both GPUs have been replaced by their respective Radeon VII successors.

The RX Vega 56 reference design features 56 CUs running at 1,138-1,474 MHz (Boost) and 8 GB of HBM2 VRAM running at 800 MHz connected via a 2,048-bit memory bus resulting in a memory bandwidth of 409.6 GB/s.

Features

Vega 10 is still produced in a 10-nm manufacturing process. The die consists of roughly 12.5 billion transistors and measures 495 mm2 in size. The newer Vega 20 chip, which AMD’s current Radeon VII is based on, features around 13.2 billion transistors. Applications have access to a total of 3,584 shaders, but the GPU lacks the dedicated Raytracing and Tensor cores that can be found on Nvidia’s latest RTX generation of GPUs.

Performance

Performance-wise, the RX Vega 56 is comparable to an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070, and thus best categorized as upper middle-class. Games released in 2018 and 2019 should run perfectly fine and smooth in high details on WQHD (2560 x 1440).

Power Consumption

According to AMD, the RX Vega 56’s maximum power consumption is 210 W. Given the GTX 1070’s power consumption of just 150 W, the Vega 56 cannot keep up with its direct competitor in regards to performance-per-watt ratio.

The Intel Xe Graphics G7 80EUs (Tiger-Lake U GPU with 80 EUs) is a integrated graphics card in the mid range Tiger-Lake U CPUs (15 - 28 Watt, e.g. Core i5 11th Gen CPUs). It is using the new Xe architecture (Gen12) and should be announced later in 2020.

The performance depends on the TDP settings of the laptop and the used cooling. First informations show that the chip can be configured at 15 and 28 Watt TDP default (as the Ice Lake-U chips) and the performance should be around a dedicated GeForce MX330 in 3DMark benchmarks. For gaming we are expecting a bit worse performance due to the missing dedicated graphics memory and driver support. Compared to the older Iris Plus G4 in Ice Lake chips, the Tiger Lake GPU should be nearly twice as fast. Benchmarks with various laptops show that the 80EU version lacks about 18% behind the faster 96EU version and on par with the MX330. Compared to AMD iGPUs, the G7 80EU positions itself around the Vega 7 and Vega 8 chips (see chart below for details).

Therefore, the iGPU is still only for lowest graphical settings and low resolutions in demanding games. Some modern games like Days Gone or Cyberpunk wont run over 30 fps in minimum settings (see below).

The Tiger Lake SoCs and therefore the integrated GPU are manufactured in the modern 10nm+ (10nm Superfin) process (improved 10nm process) at Intel and therefore should offer a very good efficiency.