The AMD Radeon R7 (Bristol Ridge) is an integrated graphics card for the fastest mobile AMD Carrizo APUs. At its launch, the R7 is available on the top model FX9830P with 512 GCN shader units and a core clock of 900 MHz. The technical specifications do not differ from the AMD Radeon R7 in Carrizo, but the clock is up to 100 MHz higher. Depending on the cooling and the configurable TDP (12-45 Watts), the performance can differ quite a lot. The performance also depends on the memory (best performance with dual-channel DDR4).
Architecture and Features
According to AMD, the Radeon R7 consists of eight cores based on the third GCN generation (often called GCN 1.2 or 2.0 in the press). It is therefore very similar to the Tonga desktop chip and supports DirectX 12 (FL 12_0). Furthermore, its shaders can be used with Mantle, OpenGL and OpenCL. HSA 1.0 is supported for running code on both CPU and GPU cores simultaneously.
Compared to the Kaveri generation (Kaveri R7 with GCN 1.1), the new color compression in particular results in better memory utilization and improves the gaming performance by 5-7 %.
The improved video decoder of Carrizo/Bristol Ridge now includes UVD 6 (Unified Video Decoder), which can decode HVEC / H.265 up to 4K in hardware. Furthermore, the VCE (Video Codec Engine) has been improved for faster transcoding of H.264. More information on architecture and features of the Bristol Ridge architecture can be found in our launch article.
Performance
Depending on the configurable TDP of the Bristol Ridge chips between 12 up to 45 Watts, there can be significant differences in games. Overall, the results are slightly better compared to the Carrizo Radeon R7 due to the higher clocks for comparable model. You can still use the Kaveri R7 benchmarks to check the gaming performance.
Power Consumption
Depending on the configurable TDP (cTDP), the 28 nm chip is specified at 12-45 Watts. It can therefore be used for thin and light notebooks as well as medium-sized devices or All-in-Ones (AiO).
The Intel Iris Plus Graphics 645 (GT3e) is a processor graphics card that was first seen in the Apple MacBook Pro 13 (Entry, 2019) in mid 2019. It is similar to the Iris Plus Graphics 655 in the 28 Watt CPUs.
The so called GT3e version of the Coffee-Lake GPU still has 48 Execution Units (EUs), which can reach up to 1150 MHz depending on the model. Besides eDRAM cache, the Iris 645 can also access the system memory (2x 64 Bit DDR3L-2133/DDR4-2400) via processor interface.
Performance
The exact performance of the Iris Plus Graphics 645 depends on the CPU model, because maximum clock as well as the size of the L3 cache can differ a bit. The system memory (DDR3/DDR4) will influence the performance as well.
The fastest chips are high-clocked Core i7 models like the Core i7-8557U. Depending on the game, the Iris Plus 655 will probably be on par with a dedicated GeForce 930M or GeForce 940MX and can handle smooth gameplay in modern titles in low up to medium settings.
Features
The reworked video engine now fully supports hardware decoding of H.265/HEVC videos. Contrary to Skylake, however, Kaby Lake can now also decode H.265/HEVC Main 10 with a 10-bit color depth as well as Google's VP9 codec. The video output is possible via DP 1.2/eDP 1.3 (up to 3840 x 2160 @60 Hz), whereas HDMI is also supported in the older 1.4a standard. An HDMI 2.0 output can be added via converter from DisplayPort. The GPU can drive up to three displays simultaneously.
Power Consumption
The Iris Plus Graphics 645 is used for 15-Watt processor and therefore small-sized notebooks.
Average Benchmarks AMD Radeon R7 (Bristol Ridge) → 100%n=11
Average Benchmarks Intel Iris Plus Graphics 645 → 214%n=11
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card - Average benchmark values for this graphics card * Smaller numbers mean a higher performance 1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation
Game Benchmarks
The following benchmarks stem from our benchmarks of review laptops. The performance depends on the used graphics memory, clock rate, processor, system settings, drivers, and operating systems. So the results don't have to be representative for all laptops with this GPU. For detailed information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.