Date: Jan. 9, 2024
CPU’s have increased in their capabilities every year for decades and many processors offer integrated graphics. Some have marketed them as iCPU’s. You don’t need a stand-alone graphics card, you can run your graphics right from the CPU and motherboard. For years this has been great because it saved you money, no extra video card needed, and many people don’t require anything better than text editing and watching a video. Of course some people have 4k monitors or want to run PC games or are doing video editing and that can become slow or impossible using integrated graphics alone.
CPU’s are getting better and better and there has been a quite a bit of noise made in terms of the integrated graphics capabilities. Look no further than the M-line CPU in the Mac Mini. It has no discrete GPU and is used for professional video editing. In terms of graphics processing there are only 3 companies that make CPU’s that compete at the top: Apple, Intel and AMD.
Let’s look at where they are at in terms of integrated graphics.
Apple M1,M2 and M3
Apple has its own echo system and tightly controlled hardware. This has advantages in terms of writing software. They also have media engines, a group of specialized cores within Apple Silicon that are dedicated to the processing of codecs used for digital media. Some of this functionality would typically be on a GPU.
The Macbook Pro sells integrated graphics and discrete graphics so the benchmarks are dependent on which GPU was used in the tests. The Geekbench CL rankings of GPU’s ranks the Apple M2 Ultra as the fastest Apple GPU and compares to the NVIDIA RTX 2080 Super. The Apple M2 ultra starts at about $4,000 but that is a complete computer not just CPU.
Apple organized their CPU’s into four categories: M (base), PRO, MAX and ULTRA. The M2 model has 10 graphics cores each with 16 execution units, 160 in total and list the compute power as 3.6Tflops. The M2-Pro has up to 19-cores and the M2-Max has 38 cores. Let’s see where the M2 base processor stacks up in the Geekbench CL rankings; comparable to a GeForce GTX 970 which came out in 2014. The M2 Mac Mini will cost you about $800 and again that is a complete system.
Apple has its own echo system and you cannot purchase just the M-processors. There is no AMD or Intel equivalent CPU to the M2 Ultra unless you purchase a discrete videocard. In terms of value you are paying loads of money for getting the best CPU graphics processor on earth. If you pay less, Apple will give you less. You really get what you pay for.
AMD RDNA 3
AMD calls their integrated graphics APU’s Accelerated processing units and basically is equivalent to the iCPU naming convention. The AMD Radeon 780M is based on their latest RDNA3 architecture can be found on the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS mobile processor. You can look for it in a mini PC for under $1,000. In terms of geekbench CL benchmarking its equivalent to the Apple M3 or a GTX 1060 graphics card.
RDNA 3 is the base of their Radeon RX 7000 series GPU family. You will see many handheld devices with the Ryzen Z1 line of processors. On mobile processors you can look for Radeon 780M integrated graphics. The RDNA 3 architecture have 96 graphics units and list 61 Tflops of compute power.
Intel XE2-LPG
The Intel XE integrated graphics have been around for some time and honestly have not been very impressive. However they serve their purpose of providing graphics to the motherboard. Here comes XE2 the next generation of XE graphics with LPG – Low power gaming. The HPG – high power gaming are used on the Intel Arc A380 graphics processor. The CPU generation said to have XE2-LPG graphics are the 14th generation ‘Meteor Lake’ CPU’s. I checked some of the Intel CPU’s and they do not seem to have XE2 yet. They will be the best iCPU’s on the market with 8 XE cores, 128 vector engines, 8 ray tracing units. It is said to have the comparable benchmarks to the GTX 1650 GPU. That doesn’t sound impressive but when you think about it that’s all on your CPU. The ‘Meteor Lake’ processors differentiate CPU from GPU and from NPU – Neural Processing Unit and have an open source standard so that any software that is able can take advantage of.
Conclusion
Apple base M processors are comparable to the best integrated processors that AMD or Intel have right now. On the other hand the M2-Ultra processor is a very powerful graphics processor comparable to a high end GPU. There is a huge difference and huge price difference between the low end and high end Apple M-processors. Apple you are buying an entire computer not just a CPU so its a bit unfair to compare them against Intel and AMD CPU’s.
AMD has integrated graphics based on their RDNA 3 graphics architecture the Radeon 780M and in the PC world that is as good as it gets right now. That compares to a GTX 1060 GPU.
Intel has released their XE2-LPG integrated graphics which has better graphics than the Radeon 780M and is comparable to the GTX 1650 which for many years was one of the best value for your money GPU on the market. Look out for this Intel CPU likely a mobile CPU in a laptop that will provide the best PC iCPU graphics at low cost.
We are at this fine point of ‘are the PC discrete graphics good enough for your graphics needs?’. Integrated graphics will work in the video editing world but certain operations will take time. I can do video editing fine on my mini PC that has a Ryzen 5 5560U CPU but rendering took 10x longer than on my PC with a discrete Intel Arc GPU. I expect that a mid range GPU will beat Intel or AMD integrated graphics every time. BTW, that mini PC case is about the size of 3 CD’s stacked on top of each other. If you are a smart shopper, a mid range GPU can cost as little as $300. On the other hand my mini PC can run three 4k monitors and video edit fine and for $320 that’s amazing already.
At this time I would recommend a discrete GPU for PC’s if you are playing PC games or doing more than casual video editing. It seems like it will just be a matter of time that iCPU’s will be powerful enough to do lagless gaming and video editing. Apple is already doing it at a premium. I expect for many gamers and casual video editors the higher end integrated graphics are sufficient and in time this will only get better.
I am most excited about higher end integrated graphics in mini computers, all in ones and even laptops. One reason to have a big tower PC is so you can fit your RTX 4090 GPU in it. Hopefully the next generations of Intel and AMD integrated graphics will start to rival the Apple M2-ultra and higher end GPU’s and all fit in a mini PC case.
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Author: Andrew Miles, Sr Systems Administrator at the School of Computer Science