Radeon 880M vs Radeon 780M: RDNA 3.5 iGPU fails to overtake predecessor in latest OpenCL test

A big part of the excitement regarding AMD’s Strix Point APUs is their RDNA 3.5 iGPU component. Namely, the Radeon 880M and Radeon 890M, the integrated graphics solutions featured inside the Ryzen AI 9 365 and AI 9 HX 370, respectively, could provide entry-level dGPU performance. Recent leaks regarding the Strix Point performance have only put more weight behind this assertion.

For instance, the Radeon 890M inside the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 was seen earning a score of close to 43,000 in the OpenCL graphics benchmark. This puts the iGPU in the range of dGPUs like the GeForce RTX 2050 and better than the legendary RX 580 which, interestingly, sits above the RX 6600 in the Steam Hardware Survey for June 2024.

While not as performant as the Radeon 890M, the Radeon 880M should also, in theory, be noticeably faster than the Radeon 780M owing to the new architecture. ASUS claimed last week that the iGPU performs 15% better than the Radeon 780M in the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark, potentially making the upcoming Zenbook S16 a solid device for gaming despite lacking a discrete board.

However, a new Radeon 880M OpenCL listing has popped up on the Geekbench database and the result is underwhelming, to say the least.

Running inside an ASUS Zenbook S16 with its Ryzen AI 9 365 APU, the Radeon 880M achieved an OpenCL score of 30,521. One look at the OpenCL benchmark chart is enough to confirm that this score is quite disappointing.

For starters, the fastest Radeon 780M result is 31,337 or 3% better. So, the Radeon 880M appears to be on par with its predecessor. This also means that the Radeon 880M performs similar to the 8-core Intel Arc iGPU which, per our testing, trades blows with the Radeon 780M.

While on the surface the Radeon 880M’s latest OpenCL result contradicts ASUS’s claim of faster performance than the Radeon 780M, it is important to mention that the Zenbook S16 under discussion was configured with 1,868 MT/s DDR5 memory which is quite slow. Since iGPUs lack dedicated VRAM and share system memory with the CPU, slow memory is a huge bottleneck.

Additionally, we don’t know the power setting of the laptop being tested. So, it is quite possible that the Ryzen AI 9 365 was running with a limited TDP and thus wasn’t able to perform as expected.

So, take the Radeon 880M’s OpenCL score with a grain of salt and wait from official reviews to ascertain the true performance of the Strix Point APUs.

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