In life two things are confirmed, death and integrated graphics suck. Integrated graphics can barely run old titles, so forget about running any new games. For this reason, dedicated graphics cards are needed. It seems Intel is looking to mend its ways. Intel is looking to improve graphics.
Intel will introduce its Gen11 series of GPUs from next year. Currently, we are at generation 9, so the processor company is looking to skip a whole series straight to 11. This makes it clear how much Intel wants to boost its graphics performance.
The new generation will be the first GPU to cross one teraflop.
Don’t get me wrong this is a step in the right direction for Intel, but the graphics performance it provides will still suck. Only, it will suck less this time around. Current Iris GPUs on the market can get close to that performance but are still rarely equipped on popular laptops. One of the company’s competition is Qualcomm which is all set to go head-to-head with Intel with its 7nm Snapdragon 8cx compute platform.
On the other hand, Intel’s parts will only take them up to AMD, which has provided more than 1 Teraflop performance on some iGPUs for quite a few months now.
The Gen11 GPUs will also use tile-based rendering, dividing scenes into tiles so that portions can be rendered individually. The biggest advantage will be in saving memory bandwidth, which is already so low when premium components are used. The new GPUs will also support HDR and Adaptive Sync.
Intel did not provide any additional information, neither did it provide benchmark scores to compare with last generation’s GPUs. Once we get our hands on the actual GPU, we will be able to give our full analysis.
It will be a good opportunity for us to compare the GPU regarding performance with last year’s GPUs. Since desktop PCs are open-ended regarding hardware, users can easily open the thing up and install an external GPU whenever they desire.
This isn’t possible on laptops, due to their innate flaws. Thanks to advancements in technology users can attach external GPUs with their laptops via Thunderbolt 3. These things can be really expensive. Then there is the issue of always carrying an external GPU and its casing when one is traveling. The biggest issue is that still, only a handful of laptops have a Thunderbolt 3 port.
We all must be realistic even if Intel somehow does manage to improve its (insert awful word) graphics. They won’t let you play the latest graphics in 60 FPS. Intel’s chips have never been about graphics. That’s why companies like NVIDIA and AMD exist.
Despite the shortcomings still existing, we might get something better than before. Hopefully, users will get somewhat decent FPS when playing recent games in low to medium settings. Intel is also going to release its first dedicated GPU in more than two decades, which is newsworthy.
The GPU dubbed Intel Xe will face stiff competition from graphics card veterans AMD and NVIDIA. But we will have to wait until 2020 to get a taste of Intel Xe.
Hamza Tauqeer
