AMD Radeon R6 (Carrizo) vs Intel UHD Graphics 620 vs AMD Radeon R7 (Carrizo)

AMD Radeon R6 (Carrizo)

The AMD Radeon R6 (Carrizo) is an integrated graphics card in the low-end Carrizo APUs. At launch in mid 2015 the R6 was used in the AMD A10-8700P and A8-8600P with 384 GCN shaders and 720 resp. 800 MHz clock rate (Boost?). Depending on the configured TDP (ranging from 12 to 35 Watt) and used main memory (up to DDR3-2133 in dual channel mode supported) the performance can differ greatly. 

Architecture and Features

The Radeon R6 is using the third generation GCN architecture (sometimes also called GCN 1.2) similar to the desktop Tonga chip. Therefore, it offers DirectX 12 (FL 12_0) hardware support and advanced color compression that leads to 5-7% improvement in games. Furthermore, the shaders can be used with Mantle, OpenGL and OpenCL. HSA 1.0 is supported to easily run code on CPU and GPU cores together.

The improved video decoder UVD 6 (Unified Video Decoder) is now able to decode HVEC / H.265 in up 4K in hardware. Furthermore, the VCE (Video Codec Engine) was improved for faster transcodes of H.264.

More information on architecture and features of the Carrizo chips can be found in our launch article.

Performance

The gaming performance of the integrated R6 depends on the configured TDP (12 - 35 Watt) of the chip. The difference from a 15 Watt A8 to a 35 Watt A10 e.g. can be 49% (3DMark 11, see scores below). Demanding games like Evolve or Far Cry 4 will struggle to achieve fluent frame rates. However, less demanding games like Counter-Strike: GO may even run in high detail settings (see the Kaveri R7 GPU for benchmarks).

Power Consumption

Depending on the configured TDP the chip may be used in thin and light machines (12 - 20 Watt range) or normal sized laptops (35 Watt TDP).

Intel UHD Graphics 620

The Intel UHD Graphics 620 (GT2) is an integrated graphics unit, which can be found in various ULV (Ultra Low Voltage) processors of the Kaby Lake Refresh generation (8th generation Core). Compared to the similar named Intel HD Graphics 620 in the 2016 Kaby Lake CPUs, only the name changed from HD to UHD. It is clocked with up to 1.150 MHz and therefore 100 MHz higher than the old HD Graphics 620 (max. 1.050 MHz) and offer a comparable performance. Due to its lack of dedicated graphics memory or eDRAM cache, the HD 620 has to access the main memory (2x 64bit DDR3/DDR4).

Performance

The exact performance of the UHD Graphics 620 depends on various factors like L3 cache size, memory configuration (DDR3/DDR4) and maximum clock rate of the specific model and as is similar to the Intel HD Graphics 620 and Intel HD Graphics 630. Compared to the average HD Graphics 620, the UHD graphics profits from the quad-core CPU a bit in our gaming benchmarks. Therefore, should be positioned between a GeForce 910M and 920M dedicated graphics card from Nvidia. For games, the drivers however are not that fast updated and tested as with GeForce graphics cards. In our tests, the UHD 620 is most suited for casual games like Team Fortress 2, Rocket League or Farming Simulator 17. See below for a list of modern games tested with various models.

Features

The revised video engine now supports H.265/HEVC Main10 profile in hardware with 10 bit colors. Furthermore, Googles VP9 codec can also be hardware decoded. The first models do not support HDCP 2.2 and therefore Netflix 4K. This was added with the new models in 2017 and beginning of May 2017 also the older CPU models like the i3-7100U are now shipped with a new S-Spec Code that supports HDCP 2.2. HDMI 2.0 however is still only supported with an external converter chip (LSPCon).

Power Consumption

The UHD Graphics 620 can be found in mobile processors specified at 15 W TDP and is therefore suited for compact laptops and ultrabooks. The power consumption during playing The Witcher 3 (with an external monitor) was comparable to a Intel HD Graphics 620 based laptop and on the lowest end of all of our measurements. Dedicated GPUs, like the GeForce 940MX, needed a lot more power.

AMD Radeon R7 (Carrizo)

The AMD Radeon R7 (Carrizo) is an integrated graphics card in the fastest Carrizo APUs. At launch in mid 2015 the R7 was used in the AMD FX-8800P SoC with 512 GCN shaders and 800 MHz clock rate (Boost?). Depending on the configured TDP (ranging from 12 to 35 Watt) and used main memory (up to DDR3-2133 in dual channel mode supported) the performance can differ greatly. 

Architecture and Features

The Radeon R7 is using the third generation GCN architecture (sometimes also called GCN 1.2) similar to the desktop Tonga chip. Therefore, it offers DirectX 12 (FL 12_0) hardware support and advanced color compression that leads to 5-7% improvement in games. Furthermore, the shaders can be used with Mantle, OpenGL and OpenCL. HSA 1.0 is supported to easily run code on CPU and GPU cores together.

The improved video decoder UVD 6 (Unified Video Decoder) is now able to decode HVEC / H.265 in up 4K in hardware. Furthermore, the VCE (Video Codec Engine) was improved for faster transcodes of H.264.

More information on architecture and features of the Carrizo chips can be found in our launch article.

Performance

The gaming performance of the integrated R7 depends on the configured TDP (12 - 35 Watt) of the chip. AMD e.g. published 3DMark 11 scores of a 15 and 35 Watt version, where the 35 Watt version was 38% faster than the 15 Watt version. Demanding games like Evolve or Far Cry 4 will struggle to achieve fluent frame rates. However, less demanding games like Call of Duty: AW may even run in high detail settings (see the slightly slower Kaveri R7 GPU for benchmarks).

Power Consumption

Depending on the configured TDP the chip may be used in thin and light machines (12 - 20 Watt range) or normal sized laptops (35 Watt TDP).