AMD Radeon R9 M365X vs Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200 vs AMD Radeon R9 M390

AMD Radeon R9 M365X

The AMD Radeon R9 M365X is a mid range DirectX 12 compatible graphics card for laptops. It is based on the GCN architecture and manufactured in 28nm. The older Radeon R9 M270 and the current Radeon R9 M370X are very similar (see for gaming benchmarks).

The R9 M365X uses 640 shader cores (10 compute units) clocked at 925 MHz (max.) and supports according to the AMD website 4 GB GDDR5 at 1125 MHz (4 GHz effective). The only used version in a Toshiba laptop so far however only uses 2 GB GDDR5.

Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200

The Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200 (GT3 + eDRAM), also called the HD Graphics 5200, is a processor graphics card that is included in some of the Haswell processors of 2013 (e.g. Core i7-4750HQ). It represents the highest configuration of the integrated graphics unit (40 execution units) and also has an additional eDRAM cache (128 MB on-package, 77 mm², 102 GB/s). The base clock can be automatically overclocked using Turbo Boost technology. Depending on the processor model, the base and turbo clock rates may differ (usually up to 1200 - 1300 MHz), resulting in varying graphics performance between CPU models.

In comparison to the HD 4000, the graphics core has been modified extensively. The Iris Pro supports DirectX 11.1, OpenCL 1.2 and OpenGL 4.0. It also features an improved decoder for 4K videos and the fast Quick Sync encoder.

Thanks to the fast eDRAM memory, the average performance of the Iris Pro is only about 15 percent behind the dedicated mid-range cards GeForce GT 650M and GT 750M (DDR3 versions). This makes the Iris Pro even faster than AMDs Radeon HD 8650G and the fastest integrated GPU of 2013. Therefore, many current games can be played fluently in medium or high detail settings and a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. In some older or less demanding titels like Diablo III or Fifa 2013, even higher resolutions or quality settings may be possible.

Due to the 22nm 3D Tri-Gate production process, power consumption should be relatively low. The Iris Pro can be found on certain quad-core Haswell CPUs in the 47 Watt TDP range.

AMD Radeon R9 M390

The AMD Radeon R9 M390 is a mobile graphics card from 2015 and positioned as a fast mid-range GPU. It should be based on the the old Pitcairn chip (e.g. in 2012 used in the desktop 7870 graphics card) and offers 1024 shader cores clocked at 958 MHz. Furthermore, 2 GB GDDR5 dedicated graphics memory are connected via a 256 Bit memory bus. The graphics card is used in the Apple iMac 27-inch late 2015 (mid range model).

The performance of the Radeon R9 M390 slightly above a Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M or 870M but still beyond a desktop Radeon R7 370. Therefore, demanding games of 2015 may only run in medium settings at up to full HD resolutions fluently. The native 5K resolution of the iMac or even the perfectly scaled 2560x1600 will be definitely too much.