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.
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)
Tests | Type | Core i5-8250U with UHD Graphics 620 | Intel 0000 with Iris Plus Graphics 940 | Difference |
Aztec Ruins Normal Tier | Offscreen | 1621 | 3453 | 113.02% |
Aztec Ruins High Tier | Offscreen | 637 | 1403 | 120.25% |
Car Chase | Offscreen | 1697 | 2910 | 71.48% |
1440p Manhattan 3.1.1 | Offscreen | 1327 | 2459 | 85.31% |
Manhattan 3.1 | Offscreen | 2428 | 3855 | 58.77% |
Manhattan | Offscreen | 3692 | 7063 | 91.31% |
T-Rex | Offscreen | 6786 | 10232 | 50.78% |
Tessellation | Offscreen | 9217 | 14541 | 57.76% |
ALU 2 | Offscreen | 5348 | 12411 | 132.07% |
Driver Overhead 2 | Offscreen | 6692 | 4433 | -33.76% |
Texturing | Offscreen | 9078 | 17685 | 94.81% |
Overall | 76.53% |
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)
Tests | Type | Ryzen 7 2700U with Vega 10 | Intel 0000 with Iris Plus Graphics 940 | Difference |
Aztec Ruins Normal Tier | Offscreen | N/A | 3453 | N/A |
Aztec Ruins High Tier | Offscreen | N/A | 1403 | N/A |
Car Chase | Offscreen | 1714 | 2910 | 69.78% |
1440p Manhattan 3.1.1 | Offscreen | 1339 | 2459 | 83.64% |
Manhattan 3.1 | Offscreen | 2145 | 3855 | 79.72% |
Manhattan | Offscreen | 2291 | 7063 | 208.29% |
T-Rex | Offscreen | 5576 | 10232 | 83.50% |
Tessellation | Offscreen | 13606 | 14541 | 6.87% |
ALU 2 | Offscreen | 11918 | 12411 | 4.14% |
Driver Overhead 2 | Offscreen | 3680 | 4433 | 20.46% |
Texturing | Offscreen | 16025 | 17685 | 10.36% |
Overall | 62.97% |
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)
Tests | Type | Ryzen 5 2400G with Vega 11 | Intel 0000 with Iris Plus Graphics 940 | Difference |
Aztec Ruins Normal Tier | Offscreen | 3901 | 3453 | -11.48% |
Aztec Ruins High Tier | Offscreen | 1651 | 1403 | -15.02% |
Car Chase | Offscreen | 3115 | 2910 | -6.58% |
1440p Manhattan 3.1.1 | Offscreen | 2328 | 2459 | 5.63% |
Manhattan 3.1 | Offscreen | 3544 | 3855 | 8.78% |
Manhattan | Offscreen | 3386 | 7063 | 108.59% |
T-Rex | Offscreen | 11113 | 10232 | -7.93% |
Tessellation | Offscreen | 17803 | 14541 | -18.32% |
ALU 2 | Offscreen | 15353 | 12411 | -19.16% |
Driver Overhead 2 | Offscreen | 4012 | 4433 | 10.49% |
Texturing | Offscreen | 27824 | 17685 | -36.44% |
Overall | 1.69% |
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.
Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Want to comment on this story? Let us know what you think in the Tom's Hardware Forums.
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.