AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (Desktop) vs AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL / 870

AMD Radeon RX Vega 11

The AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 is an integrated GPU in the Ryzen desktop APUs (e.g. Ryzen 5 2400G) that were launched early 2018. The graphics card is based on the Vega architecture (5th generation GCN) and has all 11 CUs (=704 shaders) clocked at up to 1240 MHz (Ryzen 5 2400G). The GPU benefits from fast dual-channel DDR4-2400 RAM (contrary to DDR4-2133 single-channel, which is also possible).

The Vega architecture offers some improvements over the Polaris generation and now supports DirectX 12 Feature Level 12_1. More information is available in our dedicated article about the Raven Ridge architecture.

According to a first 3DMark Fire Strike that was published by AMD, the Vega 11 offers a similiar theoretical performance as the older dedicated Radeon R9 M280X. In games the missing dedicated graphics memory may however prove to be a bottleneck. Therefore, modern and demanding games will only be playable in lowest settings and the APU is mostly intended for lower demanding games like Overwatch, Dota 2, ...

Thanks to the 14nm process and clever power-saving features, the power consumption is comparatively low. The high TDP of 65 Watt of the APU however should lead to a much higher power consumption compared to the mobile APUs with 15 Watt TDP.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (Desktop)

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 is an entry level graphics card for desktops based on the Pascal architecture. It uses the same GP107 chip as the GTX 1050 Ti, but with only 640 instead of 768 shaders. The chip is manufactured at Samsung in 14 nm (opposed to the 16 nm TSCM based Pascal chips of the 1060 and up). The performance and specs should be similar to the GTX 1050 laptop version, that will be released later (early 2017). Compared to the faster GTX 1050 Ti, the 1050 offers less shaders (640 instead of 768) and only 2 GB of GDDR5 (instead of the 4 GB of the 1050 Ti).

Gaming benchmarks by Nvidia state that the GTX 1050 is about 30% faster on average than the Radeon RX 460 with 2 GB VRAM. The 4 GB version of the RX 460 should be about 10% slower and the older GTX 950 should reach a similar performance level as the new GTX 1050. Therefore, the GTX 1050 should be ideal for 1080p gaming with high detail settings (but not max settings).

AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL / 870

The AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL or Radeon RX Vega 870 (according to Dell) is an integrated GPU in the slower Intel Kaby-Lake-G SoC. It combines a Kaby-Lake processor, a Vega graphics card and 4 GB HBM2 memory on a single package. The graphics card offers 20 CUs (1280 shaders) and is clocked from 931 - 1011 MHz.

Currently it looks like the GPU is a mixture of Polaris (Shaders?) and Vega (HBM memory controller at least). E.g. the graphics card is called Polaris 22 internally. Detailed information on the Vega architecture can be found in our dedicated article about the Raven Ridge architecture.

The performance of the Vega M GL should be between the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti according to benchmarks from Intel. Therefore, it should be well suited for 1080p and high resolution gaming.

The power consumption should be quite similar to a dedicated Vega Mobile GPU, but due to the small form factor, smaller laptops can be built with the Kaby-Lake-G SoC. The TDP is specified at 65 Watt for the whole package including GPU, CPU and HBM2 memory.