Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics vs Intel Arc A550M vs Intel Arc A380

Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics

The Intel Iris Xe MAX (DG1 Low Power - LP or iDG1LPDEV) is a dedicated PCIe 4.0 mobile entry-level graphics card with 96 execution units (EUs) based on the Gen 12 architecture. Compared to the integrated Intel Iris Xe in the Tiger Lake CPUs, the Xe MAX offers 4 GB dedicated LPDDR4x graphics memory (68 GB/s versus 56 GB/s for the MX350) and higher clock speeds of 1.65 GHz (vs. 1.35 GHz). Both support DP4A DLBoost instructions to speed up AI tasks and two media engines (including AV1 decoding in hardware). Currently the GPU is only available for Tiger Lake based laptops and offers some possibilities to use the iGPU and dGPU together (using the Deep Link software framework). The GPU uses hybrid graphics to turn off the Xe MAX when not in used (display ports are routed through the iGPU, but the Xe MAX features four dedicated display ports in comparison to the Nvidia GeForce MX350).

Furthermore, Intel supports to shift TDP between the two chips for better CPU performance or balancing graphics workloads.

The gaming performance is on average slightly better than a fast Intel Iris Xe iGPU with plenty of TDP and cooling headroom. There are even some games where the iGPU is faster thanks to Deep Link sharing power and cooling. Intel targets 1080p gaming with low to medium settings with the GPU and provided examples where the MAX is on par or better than a dedicated Nvidia GeForce MX350. 

According to Intel, the GPU is mostly aimed at content creators that can make use of the additional compute units, AI (DP4a) acceleration or media encoders.

As the Iris Xe Graphics, the Xe MAX supports Variable Rate Shading, Adaptive Sync, Async Compute, DirectX 12.1, OpenGL 4.6 and OpenCL 2.

As the Tiger Lake CPUs, the Iris Xe MAX dGPU is manufactured in the modern 10nm SuperFin process at Intel. Intel aims the Max-GPU for laptops with a combined power budget of 35 Watt and up. The power consumption of the GPU alone is specified similar to the 25W of the GeForce MX350 (we guess including the graphics memory).

Intel Arc A550M

The Intel Arc A550M (device ID 5692) is a dedicated mobile lower- mid-range graphics card for laptops based on Xe HPG microarchitecture. It uses the ACM-G10 chip and offers 16 of the 32 Xe-cores (256 ALUs), 16 ray tracing units and a 128-bit memory bus for 8 GB GDDR6 graphics memory. The cores can clock from 300 MHz (low frequency mode) to 900 MHz (high frequency) or in short bursts 2050 MHz (short bursts / Turbo). The chip integrates 21.7 billion transistors, uses a BGA2660 package and the die measures 406 mm2.

The performance of the Arc A550M should be between the Radeon RX 6500M and 6600M and therefore well suited even for demanding games in medium to high detail settings and 1080p. The slower Arc A370M is based on the smaller ACM-G11 chip and should be significantly slower.

The chip also integrates two media engines for VP9, AVC, HEVC, and AV1 8k en- and decoding. The 4 display pipes support up to 4x 4k120 HDR via DMI 2.0B or DisplayPort 2.0 10G. 

The A550M is produced in 6nm at TSMC (N6 process) and supports dynamic power share (using Deep Link) with 12th gen Intel CPUs (Alder Lake).

Intel Arc A380