Sandy Bridge's integrated graphics comparable to what GFX card?

I've heard that Sandy Bridge's integrated graphics card will be more powerful than the current HD graphics and that it will compete against the "entry level" discrete graphics cards. What specific cards will it be comparable to? The Nvidia 310m? Ati 5470? Can someone give me an estimate please.

I'm a person who uses low-medium powered graphics cards because use my laptop for casual gaming and my xbox 360 for real gaming.

 

Last comparison I saw of Intel's latest Intel HD graphics was comparable to a Radeon 9800 PRO (7 year old discreet graphics). They said Sandy Bridge was as potent as HD 4225 graphics but until official figures come out

 

I've heard it's as good as a 5470 =p not half bad

 

I think Anantech showed that it rivals 5470 (in many of the benchmarks).

 

It may even go further than that. The Anandtech article tested a desktop CPU, not a mobile but this article says the testers aren't sure if their demo processor was operating on its full shader value or only half what notebooks will start shipping with (6 vs 12). Regardless, they also speculate turbo (which iirc, their test unit had deactivated) would increase performance further.

The original test article is linked within the page I linked to.

 

RWUK,

I'm pretty sure they confirmed that it was 12.

 

That would seem more reasonable.

 

If Anand had a 12EU then it's more potent than a 5450. Bearing in mind that the turbo was most certainly non functional in this test so the real thing should be even significantly better. Nothing mind blowing but who will really need a discrete GPU now among most users ? Probably not many people.

 

Yeah, I remember reading that Turbo was not enabled on that test too.

With this being their first attempt, I can see that a discrete gpu will mostly be used by the gamers and DTR crowd in the not too distant future.

 

Here is the original AnandTech article that everybody is mentioning. It is indeed comparable to the desktop Radeon HD 5450, but keep in mind that this preview is from August which means that it is a preproduction chip. Neither the hardware nor the drivers are in their final version and since they have had silicon good enough to run all of Anand's tests and games at least since the summer, there is more than half a year for optimization. The January chips could be quite a bit better than what we saw in August.

 

Anand's numbers are for the desktop i5 quad with an IGP clocked at 850/1100Mhz....mobile SB will have lower clocks on the IGP so the numbers should come down a bit in notebooks.

For the standard mobiles stock IGP clocks are 650Mhz with Turbo up to 1150Mhz or 1300Mhz for Quad. Low voltage mobile CPUs should end up even lower than that.

 

Point in case, no replacement for mid-range notebooks and gamers. The performance penalty on the CPU/RAM I don't think is worth it.

 

Wow. The IGP and entry level discrete market is where AMD makes most of its profits... This is not good news for them. As a rational consumer, it would be hard to justify going for low end discrete graphics, never mind an off-chip IGP, given these benchmarks...

Ya, of course it's not gunna edge out the high end discrete market...at least not for a while, but the trend is going that direction. 5 years ago an Intel IGP didn't come close to an entry level discrete...

 

Hurts Nvidia more since they make most of their sales in the low end discrete market.

AMD cares less about it because they've got Fusion APU to take over for their low to mid discrete market, and AMD can also pair their lower end discretes with their IGPs.

 

Well Ivy Bridge will be doubling the EU, yeah? That should be interesting.

 

I'll believe it when I see it. There was all sorts of fanfare over the Intel X4500 when it came out that it would be the end of low end discrete cards. That never happened either.

 

I'm not sure if anything is really confirmed for Ivy but I'm pretty sure we're supposed to jump from 12 to 24.

 

Yes, but given proper cooling, the lower bin Turbo Boost is effectively permanent. I have a Core i5 750 and under stress, it never actually runs at 2.66GHz -- the real stock speed is 2.8GHz. If the Turbo range is a factor of 2, then I think it will actually run fairly close to the desktop speeds unless you try to stuff it in a really hot notebook.

 

Here you are Mr Skeptical.

 

Low end discrete cards will die when onboard can do 3D at same level.

 

Yay barely playable frame rates on 1024x768 lowest quality...sorry I like my 1080p max quality on my desktop..

 

The response was regarding low end discreet cards. It can't compete with the mid-range or high end -- not yet anyway.

 

No way is the 5450 and the SB integrated graphics equal. Those tests were done at minimum res and settings. As soon as anything is turned up, the 5450 will pull away. The 5450 is a bunch of crap, but it is far less crappy than the SB integrated graphics.

Also they are testing the desktop 5450. They don't say whether it is DDR2 or DDR3, but judging by the poor performance it is likely the DDR2 version. The mobile 5450 has the same core at almost the same clock frequency, but it comes standard with either DDR3 which will blow the desktop DDR2 version away, or GDDR3, which will blow the mobile DDR3 version away. The SB integrated graphics core is guaranteed to be a lot weaker than the 5450's core, but paired with DDR3 on a 128-bit interface of course it will be on par with the 5450 using DDR2 on a 64-bit interface.

Although SB increases the power of integrated graphics considerably, it is still not really a match for anything but the crappiest discreet GPU's, the kind that can't even play recent games anyway.

 

The only people who benefit from the new IGP is low end and low end of the mid range.

Discreet graphics will always be far superior than integrated graphics

The performance penalty on the CPU/RAM far outweighs the benefits over super low end IGP. And as Trottel stated that was tested on LOWEST resolution and LOWEST quality. But when you start cranking up settings IGP chokes.

As for power consumption, heat that is a different issue but people who want high end graphics usually don't care for both, and neither do I.

 

I already saw that article. Low res and low detail. Crank up the detail or res any amount and the integrated won't have a chance. The dedicated will still perform without much loss in framerate. You are still limited by bus width / bandwidth with the integrated and tied to system RAM which is going to be clocked slower than any dedicated graphics RAM.

edit: d'oh looks like I should have read the other responses, they said the same thing I did...

 

No, it is not. The memory bandwidth of the HD5450 is at most 12.8GB/s. Dual channel DDR3-1600 is twice that so it can get as much and still leave plenty for the CPU. Again, it's not like the thing is trying to compete with GDDR5.

 

The memory is obviously not holding back the SB graphics core in the Anandtech benchmarks, but the memory sure is holding back the HD5450 in those same benchmarks. I am sure that with GDDR3 the HD5450 would annihilate the SB integrated graphics, even at lowest possible settings and resolution like the lame Anantech test.

 

There's no denying it's an improvement. It's a good step in the right direction and IB will help as well.

 

Of course it is an improvement, but discrete GPU's improve as well. Moreso on the desktop, but laptop GPU's have still continued to improve.

 

That's not what's important, though. The real question is whether or not the difference is big enough to merit buying a 5450 for an SB system.

Any way you try to look at it, there's no denying that the days or entry-level dedicated cards are numbered. SB will drastically reduce their value, and Ivy Bridge and Haswell (along with Fusion) will render them all but pointless.

 

Im ready to see the day that the CPU does everything. Hell might as well start creating a Mobo where you need nothing but a screen to plug into.

I agree though, but for a long time I have thought that GPU's days weather integrated or dedicated are numbered. Technology is improving so fast so soon that separate components will no longer be needed. Im talking about a HDD, RAM, CPU, GPU, PCI, USB. Nothing is going to be needed anymore. I put money on it.

 

So which is it? Is the 5450 going to pull away once you turn things up or is it memory-bound (which means when you increase the resolution, the frame rate will drop sharply)?

To be honest, the comparison between GPUs is only useful as a way of figuring out what it can do (the HD 5450 is a known quantity). The real question for most people is "Can it do what I want it to do?". If the things to be done include at most casual gaming, then yes, absolutely. For me, the question is more along the lines of "Can it play Dragon Age 2 at reasonable settings?" With Sandy Bridge, the answer is probably going to be "Almost, but not quite." With Ivy Bridge and Mass Effect 3, I am reasonably confident the answer will be "Yes."

 

Then again, look at all those people who dont game. They seriously wont need an integrated card anymore. Hell for all that it should be good enough to run movies, Internet hearts, Java and ActiveX related programs quite well

 

What I meant was the the HD5450 would perform better than the SB integrated graphics when you turn up settings, not that it would perform better compared to itself at lower settings. And resolution is not the only setting that affects performance. I'm just commenting that if the HD5450 is roughly equal to the SB graphics even with 1/4 the memory bandwidth and rock bottom settings, you can hardly say SB is the end of low end integrated graphics. For starters, on a laptop the low end DDR3 version of the HD5450 has double the memory bandwidth than its bottom feeder desktop version.

 

Hi, I'm the OP and I kinda got lost in this. I'm asking about Sandy Bridge's integrated graphics for LAPTOPS! . I know that Desktops blow everything away at half the price.

Can the SB integrated graphics turbo boost? I've never heard of that. How power efficient will these GFX be since they're more powerful?

 

The only time desktops are mentioned is to illustrate the difference between the crappy desktop HD 5450 that was pitted against the SB graphics core and the bit less crappy laptop HD 5450, the kind that people here are interested in as it is found on laptops. Since the only benchmarks we have are between the SB graphics core and the low end desktop HD5450, it kind of makes sense to at least put that in some sort of context and try to make sense of it from a laptop viewpoint.

Nobody even passingly mentioned anything about that.

 

We don't have laptop benchmarks yet, but the laptop version should be within 20% or so of its desktop counterpart. It's not like dedicated graphics where the desktop card can be twice as good as the laptop one. Since the unoptimized desktop version is slightly better than the HD 5450, you can consider the laptop card to be comparable to that.

Yes, it can turbo boost. The GPUs should be pretty efficient -- the TDP of the entire chip (CPU+GPU) is 45W for quad-core and 35W for dual-core.

 

Oh ok. I see guys. Thanks for clearing it up for me.

 

My point would be more to optimus and 310m. could those days now be numbered? Similar performance with better cooling and power management and more than likely a cheaper overall solution.

I think the 330m will still well cook the SB IGP but those just needing low end 3D and want great battery life SB to me looks very promising.

 

Optimus and 310M needs to die. The idea is completely wasted on a wimpy card like the 310M. The obvious use for Optimus is with something like a 460M so that you get battery life when you need it and can game when on AC power, but for some bizarre reason almost no manufacturer wants to do that. If Sandy Bridge kills this nuisance and forces them to do the obvious, I will be pleased.