AMD Radeon R9 M395 vs Intel UHD Graphics 617 vs AMD Radeon R9 M365X

AMD Radeon R9 M395

The AMD Radeon R9 M395 is a high-end mobile graphics card that can be found in the 2015 iMac 5K 27-inch. It offers 1792 shader cores (28 compute cores) clocked at 834 MHz. The 2 GB GDDR5 dedicated graphics memory is connected with a 256 Bit bus at 1365 (= 5460 effective) MHz.

The performance should be between the older Radeon R9 M295X and the Desktop Radeon R7 370. Therefore, demanding Windows games like Fallout 4 or Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 should run in maximum details at 1920x1080 (with no headroom).

Intel UHD Graphics 617

The Intel UHD Graphics 617 (GT2) is a low-end integrated graphics unit, which can be found in the Y-series of the Amber-Lake generation. This "GT2" version offers 24 Execution Units (EUs) clocked at up to 1050 MHz (depending on the CPU model). Due to its lack of dedicated graphics memory or eDRAM cache, the UHD 617 has to access the main memory (2x 64bit DDR3L/LPDDR3). Compared to the old HD Graphics 615 in Kaby-Lake-Y CPUs, the UHD 617 is the same GPU with slightly different clock speeds (depending on the model) and slight power/performance improvements due to the improved 14nm++ process. Compared to the similar UHD Graphics 615 in other Amber Lake models, the 617 looks to be higher clocked (+50 MHz) and has more headroom due to the higher TDP of 7 versus 5 Watt.

Performance

The 3D performance of the UHD 617 depends on the CPU model and the cooling / TDP-setting of the laptop. Furthermore, the used main memory (single channel, DDR3(L), amount) is influencing performance. On average the UHD graphics 617 should be very similar to the Kaby-Lake HD Graphics 615 due to the same architecture and similar speeds. That means that only low demanding games like Farming Simulator 17 or Rocket League are playable in lowest detail settings.

Features

The revised video engine in the HD 615 and UHD 615 / 617 now supports H.265/HEVC Main10 profile in hardware with 10 bit colors. Furthermore, Googles VP9 codec can also be hardware decoded. The UHD 617 should 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 UHD Graphics 617 can be found in Y processors with 7 W TDP  and is therefore suited for very thin, mostly passively cooled subnotebooks like the MacBook Air 2018.

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.