Intel UHD Graphics 32EUs (Alder Lake) vs Intel UHD Graphics (Jasper Lake 16 EU) vs Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 80EUs

The Intel UHD Graphics 16 EUs (Jasper Lake, Gen. 11) is an integrated graphics card in the Jasper Lake Celeron SoCs for laptops and small desktops. It is the low end GPU version in the Jasper Lake series (Celeron Dual-Cores) and offers only 16 of the 32 EUs (Execution Units / Shader Blocks). It offers no dedicated graphics memory and the clock rate depends on the processor model. At launch there are two Celeron models (N4500 with 6W and N4505 with 10W) clocked at 350 - 750 MHz.

Thanks to the improved architecture and more EUs, the UHD Graphics is clearly faster than the old Gemini Lake SoCs (e.g. UHD Graphics 600).

A special new feature of the Gen11 graphics card is the new Variable Rate Shading (VRS) support. With it game designers can decide where to spend shading time and e.g. shade object in the background or behind fog with less resolution (up to using only one source for a 4x4 block). With this technique early results show up to 1.3x performance in Unreal Engine POC and 1.2x speedup in Civ 6. Up to now VRS is only supported by the new Nvidia Turing architecture (GTX 1650 and up).

Another improved hardware piece is the integrated video de- and encoder that was improved significantly according to Intel. They did not specify any more details, but the previous generation was able to decode VP9 and H.265/HEVC in Main10 profile with 10 bit color depth using the dedicated hardware.

The Jasper Lake SoCs and therefore the integrated GPU are manufactured in the 10nm process (like Ice Lake probably) at Intel that should be comparable to the 7nm process of TSMC.

The Intel Xe Graphics G7 80EUs (Tiger-Lake U GPU with 80 EUs) is a integrated graphics card in the mid range Tiger-Lake U CPUs (15 - 28 Watt, e.g. Core i5 11th Gen CPUs). It is using the new Xe architecture (Gen12) and should be announced later in 2020.

The performance depends on the TDP settings of the laptop and the used cooling. First informations show that the chip can be configured at 15 and 28 Watt TDP default (as the Ice Lake-U chips) and the performance should be around a dedicated GeForce MX330 in 3DMark benchmarks. For gaming we are expecting a bit worse performance due to the missing dedicated graphics memory and driver support. Compared to the older Iris Plus G4 in Ice Lake chips, the Tiger Lake GPU should be nearly twice as fast. Benchmarks with various laptops show that the 80EU version lacks about 18% behind the faster 96EU version and on par with the MX330. Compared to AMD iGPUs, the G7 80EU positions itself around the Vega 7 and Vega 8 chips (see chart below for details).

Therefore, the iGPU is still only for lowest graphical settings and low resolutions in demanding games. Some modern games like Days Gone or Cyberpunk wont run over 30 fps in minimum settings (see below).

The Tiger Lake SoCs and therefore the integrated GPU are manufactured in the modern 10nm+ (10nm Superfin) process (improved 10nm process) at Intel and therefore should offer a very good efficiency.