Intel Iris Plus 940 Gen 11 Graphics Performance Looks Very Strong In Leaked Benchmarks
There is no denying that Intel is laser focused on graphics these days, having assembled a team to develop a discrete GPU architecture from the ground up, and committing to frequent driver updates for its integrated graphics. The latter may not sound as exciting as the former, but if we examine a series of leaked benchmarks for Intel's upcoming Gen11 graphics, we cannot help but be impressed.
Intel talked a bit about its Gen11 graphics during its Architecture Day event in December, where the primary focus was on its next-generation 10-nanometer Sunny Cover CPU platform. At the time, it was the first we had heard of Sunny Cove, which will form the basis of both Xeon (server) and Core (consumer) processors starting in the second half of 2019.
Gen11 will complement Sunny Cove. Compared to existing Gen9 graphics, Gen11 bumps the number of enhanced execution units from 24 to 64, while pushing compute performance to over 1 TFLOPS. That obviously pales in comparison to discrete GPUs like NVIDIA's GeForce RTX series and AMD's Radeon VII. However, it is a huge leap in performance for systems that rely on integrated graphics.
Intel also says Gen11 delivers enhanced mixed precision performance (Int8 and Int16) along with better FPU throughput, for improvements in AI workload processing. In addition, Intel made tweaks to its VPU media engine for higher performance and more efficient HEVC video decode and encode in hardware.
Click to Enlarge (Source: Reddit via Dylan522p)
So that is a quick and dirty recap of Gen11's technical details. What's interesting is that several leaked benchmarks have emerged, and Reddit user Dylan522p did the web a solid by arranging them in a couple of handy graphics, the first of which you see above.
Those are some massive gains over Gen9. Gen11 performs up to 132 percent faster, based on the benchmark leaks, and that is on early silicon. Combined with polished drivers, the performance gap could conceivably be even wider once Gen11 arrives.
To be clear, it appears we are looking at Intel's Iris Plus Graphics 940
Click to Enlarge (Source: Reddit via Dylan522p)
Intel is not only competing with itself, of course, and the above is a collection of scores comparing Gen11 to AMD's Ryzen processors with Vega 10 and Vega 11 graphics. Once again, we are seeing very impressive performance out of Gen11, comparatively speaking.
In GFXBench, its more of the same with some nice gains over AMD's Ryzen 2700 series processor with Vega 10 graphics. Regardless, as always, we have to take leaked benchmarks with a grain of salt. That said, what we are seeing is promising, if the final result holds true to these early figures. High-end discrete GPUs still dominate the performance landscape, but gaming on integrated graphics is not a lost cause.
If we look at Steam's Hardware and Software Survey, we see that gamers are not necessarily flocking to the fastest solutions out there. The most widely used GPU among Steam gamers is NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1060, followed by the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and GeForce GTX 1050. Integrated graphics solutions do not make as big of a dent, but if Intel is able to significantly improve performance, we might see that change.
