AMD Radeon R8 M445DX vs Intel HD Graphics 610

AMD Radeon R8 M445DX

The AMD Radeon R8 M445DX is a Dual Graphics combination of the integrated Radeon R5 (Bristol Ridge, e.g. in the A10-9600P) and a dedicated Radeon R7 M440 graphics card. It was introduced in mid 2016 for entry level multimedia laptops. The R8 M445DX runs both cards in hybrid crossfire mode and renders games in AFR mode (alternate frame rendering) that renders a frame alternately on each card. Therefore, the Dual Graphics needs driver profiles for each DX 11 game to work properly and often suffers from micro stuttering.

The Radeon R6 features 384, the Radeon R7 M440 320 shader cores, both based on the GCN architecture. Technical details on each card and benchmarks can be found on their GPU pages.

In our gaming tests, the performance of the Dual Graphics combination depends on the driver support. Except 3DMark benchmarks however, we saw nearly no game that could profit from the Crossfire combination with the launch drivers. Currently, buyers should only see the R8 M445DX as a single R7 M440.

In idle the dedicated GPU is shut down to save power and only the integrated R5 is running. Running together, the power consumption of both cards are combined (5-10 + 20-25 Watt).

Intel HD Graphics 610

The Intel HD Graphics 610 (GT1) is an integrated graphics unit, which can be found in low-end ULV (Ultra Low Voltage) processors of the Kaby-Lake generation. This "GT1" version of the Skylake GPU offers 12 Execution Units (EUs) clocked at up to 950 MHz (depending on the CPU model). Due to its lack of dedicated graphics memory or eDRAM cache, the HD 610 has to access the main memory (2x 64bit DDR3L-1600 / DDR4-2133).

The successor of the HD 610 is the renamed UHD Graphics 610 in the Whisky-Lake and Comet-Lake Pentium CPUs.

Performance

Depending on various factors like memory configuration, the HD Graphics 610 should similar to the old Skylake HD Graphics 510 and therefore can only handle non demanding games. E.g. Farming Simulator 17, World of Warships or Dota 2 Reborn can be played on low settings.

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 Pentium chips should already support HDCP 2.2 and therefore Netflix 4K. HDMI 2.0 however is still only supported with an external converter chip (LSPCon).

Power Consumption

The HD Graphics 610 can be found in mobile processors specified at 15 W TDP and is therefore suited for compact laptops and ultrabooks.