AMD Zen 5 Strix Point iGPU analysis - Radeon 890M versus Intel Arc Graphics, Apple M3 and Qualcomm Adreno X1-85

[Redaktion]

Together with its new Zen 5 mobile processors, AMD has updated its integrated graphics card as well. Top-of-the-range models such as the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 make use of the new Radeon 890M. We have performed a detailed analysis of this new iGPU inside a variety of laptops.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Zen-5-Strix-Point-iGPU-analysis-Radeon-890M-versus-Intel-Arc-Graphics-Apple-M3-and-Qualcomm-Adreno-X1-85.868475.0.html

[usacomputer]

After reading the news, the AMD Zen 5 Strix Point iGPU: Radeon 890M outperforms the Intel Arc Graphics by far, but this is the Xe and the 890M must compete against the Xe2
In any case, you can now play AAA games with the AMD iGPU, something that was unthinkable a few years ago.
I would like the tests to be done with equal hardware, because there is a lot of difference between one manufacturer and another with the same hardware parts.
PS I will definitely buy an ultrabook with Zen 5, but I want a product similar to the Surface 10 Pro

[heffeque]

After reading the news, the AMD Zen 5 Strix Point iGPU: Radeon 890M outperforms the Intel Arc Graphics by far, but this is the Xe and the 890M must compete against the Xe2
In any case, you can now play AAA games with the AMD iGPU, something that was unthinkable a few years ago.
I would like the tests to be done with equal hardware, because there is a lot of difference between one manufacturer and another with the same hardware parts.
PS I will definitely buy an ultrabook with Zen 5, but I want a product similar to the Surface 10 Pro

Now is the time for a V3 comment... and it hasn't been posted yet!
Anyways... the Minisforum V3 has a similar product to the Surface 10 Pro. More powerful, but battery is underwhelming. Maybe when they produce an HX 370 you can get to chose low power (15W) to make it more similar to the SP.

[George]

Underwhelming to say the least. :(

I'm actually rather amazed that Apple's and Intel's parts perform as well as they do in the synthetic's.

What THAT means is that it might be only DRIVER & DEVELOPER optimization that are holding those platforms back.

After all, no AAA game developers are making Apple M series native titles and Intel is rather new to having GPU hardware that might be actually useful so it will be a while (long?) before they have decent drivers.

[NikoB]

This comment is being furiously deleted by the site moderator for some unknown reason:
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iGPU suffers much more from the RAM bandwidth, because it does not have a dedicated GDDR6/HBM3 like dGPU.

In addition, historically, it turned out that AMD controllers from review to review have proven worse efficiency relative to the nominal frequency of memory modules compared to Intel. Although the palm of primacy is undoubtedly Apple - it is impossible to imagine a worse memory controller. 400 GB / s is declared, but in reality everything rests on 120 GB / s. This is a shame.

The regular Zen5 Strix has an outdated 128-bit memory controller, but its efficiency was brought to 80%, which is extremely good. For the first time on AMD, I saw numbers in the region of 100 GB / s for laptops with AMD and lddr5 7500, which in theory should have had an extremely positive effect on the performance of igpu, so the results presented "slightly" surprise me. Something is wrong here.

In any case, today Apple has the absolute lead in RAM bandwidth - 120 GB/s on laptops.

We can only wait sadly for the release of Zen5 Strix Halo with a 256-bit memory controller interface, where, with the same lpddr5 7500, the RAM bandwidth should theoretically exceed 200 GB/s. But as we have already seen from the shameful experience of the Apple development team, theory and reality are very far from each other...

I do not expect any serious progress in the iGPU until they are provided with dedicated HBM3 memory on a crystal with a real bandwidth of 300 GB/s.

When could this happen theoretically? Not earlier than 2028...

[Papajohn]

I thought the IGPU was revolutionary at first, then saw it is slower than last gen Intel IGPU, except games, where it has clear drivers advantage. Kind of pathetic, ngl...

[Papajohn]

After reading the news, the AMD Zen 5 Strix Point iGPU: Radeon 890M outperforms the Intel Arc Graphics by far, but this is the Xe and the 890M must compete against the Xe2
In any case, you can now play AAA games with the AMD iGPU, something that was unthinkable a few years ago.
I would like the tests to be done with equal hardware, because there is a lot of difference between one manufacturer and another with the same hardware parts.
PS I will definitely buy an ultrabook with Zen 5, but I want a product similar to the Surface 10 Pro

Except it really doesn't. Looking at synthetics, arc is slightly faster in raw performance, but gaming results suggests, the drivers kind of still suck. It's really underwhelming, it can't even beat last gen Intel in all situations...
Also, idk if you consider gaming at low detail, rendering at 540p with FSR as playable.
Might as well get 4060 laptop that costs not even half and have 5x higher fps.

[George]

This comment is being furiously deleted by the site moderator for some unknown reason:

NikoB is now like a bad youtuber, starting with a fake bait thumbnail. No, we will not read your silly comments even if KGB will make you delete them.

[Johanne]

Note: You not only have to update the BIOS for the Asus Laptop, please also label the actual powerdraw of the laptops, the 890m gets restricted by bandwidth really quickly as it was meant to be paired with 16mb of cache before Microsoft pushed AMD to go with a huge AI chip instead, so it does not scale with power as intended

[systemBuilder22]

I have decided that the 890m is a huge disappointment!  33% more CUs!  3% higher clock rate!  Improved RDNA 3.5 architecture!  And when you add it all up you get ... 20%? 

Really?  Really AMD?  So 1.33 × 1.03 × (1 + RDNA3.5 Boost) = 1.20?  So RDNA3.5 is a 12.5% performance LOSS?  Not impressive, it seems the iGPU is badly bottlenecked by the von Neumann bottleneck ...

[heffeque]

I have decided that the 890m is a huge disappointment!  33% more CUs!  3% higher clock rate!  Improved RDNA 3.5 architecture!  And when you add it all up you get ... 20%? 

Really?  Really AMD?  So 1.33 × 1.03 × (1 + RDNA3.5 Boost) = 1.20?  So RDNA3.5 is a 12.5% performance LOSS?  Not impressive, it seems the iGPU is badly bottlenecked by the von Neumann bottleneck ...

It's a great APU, especially for some reason on low power setups, and also on Linux 🤷

Let's see how drivers and performance advance in the coming months.

[gulman]

Beaten by Apple Silicon, even base one sometimes.
Nice, nice.

[Real NikoB (old bl)]

"George" is a hidden stupid nickname of the moderators of this site, keep that in mind.

Not impressive, it seems the iGPU is badly bottlenecked by the von Neumann bottleneck ...

I have clearly written above the direct reason for this - extremely slow RAM, which also acts as vram. It should be 3 or more times faster than in Zen5 Strix Point. It is for this same reason that AMD increases the "3D" cache - a useless crutch as soon as the code and data go beyond the size of the L1..L3 caches.

Increasing the number of computing units becomes almost completely meaningless with a bottleneck - the data bus.