Intel Gen11 Reportedly Takes iGPU Performance To Another Level

Benchmarks of Intel's Gen11 iGPU (Integrated Graphics Processing Unit) in GFXBench and CompuBench have finally surfaced. The mysterious processor with Iris Plus Graphics 940 reportedly blows past other 15W chips, such as the Intel's own Core i5-8250U and AMD's Ryzen 2700U and Ryzen 5 2400G offerings.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Intel touts up to one teraflop of 32-bit and two teraflops of 16-bit floating point performance with its Gen11 iGPU. The chipmaker's goal is to provide a decent gaming experience for its consumers. This, in the long run, can lead to more budget-friendly laptops as manufacturers wouldn't have to incorporate third-party discrete entry-level graphics cards, such as Nvidia's MX-series.

As always, you should take synthetic benchmarks (and unofficial ones, at that) with a grain of salt as they are not a definite indication of real-world performance. However, you can't deny that Gen11 posts some very promising results.

Iris UHD Graphics 620 (Gen9) vs. Iris Plus Graphics 940 (Gen11)

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TestsTypeCore i5-8250U with UHD Graphics 620Intel 0000 with Iris Plus Graphics 940Difference
Aztec Ruins Normal TierOffscreen16213453113.02%
Aztec Ruins High TierOffscreen6371403120.25%
Car ChaseOffscreen1697291071.48%
1440p Manhattan 3.1.1Offscreen1327245985.31%
Manhattan 3.1Offscreen2428385558.77%
ManhattanOffscreen3692706391.31%
T-RexOffscreen67861023250.78%
TessellationOffscreen92171454157.76%
ALU 2Offscreen534812411132.07%
Driver Overhead 2Offscreen66924433-33.76%
TexturingOffscreen90781768594.81%
Overall76.53%

On average, Gen11 is up to 77.41 percent faster than Gen9 with the onscreen tests in the GFXBench 5.0 benchmark.

AMD Vega 10 vs. Iris Plus Graphics 940 (Gen11)

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TestsTypeRyzen 7 2700U with Vega 10Intel 0000 with Iris Plus Graphics 940Difference
Aztec Ruins Normal TierOffscreenN/A3453N/A
Aztec Ruins High TierOffscreenN/A1403N/A
Car ChaseOffscreen1714291069.78%
1440p Manhattan 3.1.1Offscreen1339245983.64%
Manhattan 3.1Offscreen2145385579.72%
ManhattanOffscreen22917063208.29%
T-RexOffscreen55761023283.50%
TessellationOffscreen13606145416.87%
ALU 2Offscreen11918124114.14%
Driver Overhead 2Offscreen3680443320.46%
TexturingOffscreen160251768510.36%
Overall62.97%

The results show that Gen11 performs, on average, around 62.97 percent faster than AMD Vega 10 graphics. However, that's due to the inconsistency with the Manhattan test where Gen11 puts in an unusually high score. If we omit the Manhattan result, the performance difference drops to 44.81 percent.

AMD Vega 11 vs. Iris Plus Graphics 940 (Gen11)

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TestsTypeRyzen 5 2400G with Vega 11Intel 0000 with Iris Plus Graphics 940Difference
Aztec Ruins Normal TierOffscreen39013453-11.48%
Aztec Ruins High TierOffscreen16511403-15.02%
Car ChaseOffscreen31152910-6.58%
1440p Manhattan 3.1.1Offscreen232824595.63%
Manhattan 3.1Offscreen354438558.78%
ManhattanOffscreen33867063108.59%
T-RexOffscreen1111310232-7.93%
TessellationOffscreen1780314541-18.32%
ALU 2Offscreen1535312411-19.16%
Driver Overhead 2Offscreen4012443310.49%
TexturingOffscreen2782417685-36.44%
Overall1.69%

If we look at the average result, Gen11 outperforms AMD Vega 11 by around 1.69 percent. Once again, the Manhattan test boosts Gen11's total score. Discarding the Manhattan result actually puts AMD Vega 11 back on top with a 9 percent advantage.

Overall the results are impressive and imply that Intel's next generation of integrated graphics could be a game changer that puts the pressure on AMD's Ryzen chips with integrated graphics and Nvidia's low-end discrete graphics cards for notebooks. According to Intel's latest estimates, the Ice Lake processors packing Gen11 graphics should come to market in time for the holiday shopping season.

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Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.