After the success of the Ryzen desktop lineup early in 2017, AMD decided to make its comeback to the mobile world as well. It has been a month since you can find a laptop equipped with the new mobile Ryzen chips and we already had our hands on such a device – the Acer Swift 3 (SF315-41).
The new Raven Ridge APUs combine the new Ryzen processor architecture with an integrated implementation of the Vega graphics. As of now, we have tested one of the two available models – the higher end Ryzen 7 2700U – a CPU that is similarly priced and similarly performing as the Intel Core i7-8550U.
Now it is time to see how the integrated AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 found in the Ryzen 7 2700U performs and how does it stack against the common Intel UHD Graphics 620 found in the Kaby Lake-Refresh series.
Specs overview
Directly comparing the specifications of two integrated graphics card is a rather hard thing especially when they are built by different manufacturers because they use different terminology. Also, it is not very useful as the numbers do not always translate into real-life performance.
To start off, the Radeon RX Vega 10 is based on the new Vega architecture that AMD released while the UHD Graphics 620 is more of a rebrand of the older HD Graphics 620. Both chips support the latest DirectX 12 (12_1 feature level).
The UHD Graphics 620 features 24 EUs (Execution Units) with frequencies ranging from 300MHz to 1150MHz. On the other hand, the RX Vega 10 features 10 cores reaching up to 1300MHz with 64 shaders each for a total of 640 shaders. To get a grasp of these numbers, the shaders can be compared to something similar to NVIDIA’s CUDA cores. In other words, the RX Vega 10 can compute far more information than the 24 EUs of the UHD Graphics 620.
Being integrated, the graphics chips do not have their own power consumption or memory – they simply rely on the whole chip. With that said, the Ryzen 7 2700U and Intel’s ULV chips have the same average power consumption of 15W and support dual-channel DDR4 memory with up to 2400MHz clock.
Check out the UHD Graphics 620’s full specs here and RX Vega 10’s over here.
Intel UHD Graphics 620 – specs
AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 – specs
Benchmarks
AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 – Acer Swift 3 (SF315-41)
PRICE : $949.99
PERFORMANCE : 2288
Intel UHD Graphics 620 – Dell Inspiron 15 5579
PRICE : $899.89 (-5%)
PERFORMANCE : 1056 (-3%)
- Unigine Heaven 3.0 – Results are from the Unigine Heaven 3.0 benchmark (higher the score, the better)
AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 – Acer Swift 3 (SF315-41)
PRICE : $949.99
PERFORMANCE : 547
Intel UHD Graphics 620 – Dell Inspiron 15 5579
PRICE : $899.89 (-5%)
PERFORMANCE : 305 (-3.6%)
- Unigine Heaven 4.0 – Results are from the Unigine Heaven 4.0 benchmark (higher the score, the better)
AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 – Acer Swift 3 (SF315-41)
PRICE : $949.99
PERFORMANCE : 424
Intel UHD Graphics 620 – Dell Inspiron 15 5579
PRICE : $899.89 (-5%)
PERFORMANCE : 226 (-4%)
- Unigine Superposition – Results are from the Unigine Superposition benchmark (higher the score, the better)
AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 – Acer Swift 3 (SF315-41)
PRICE : $949.99
PERFORMANCE : 467
Intel UHD Graphics 620 – Dell Inspiron 15 5579
PRICE : $899.89 (-5%)
PERFORMANCE : 231 (-2.3%)
The graph above says it all. The RX Vega 10 blows the UHD Graphics 620 out of the water by scoring around twice as better in every graphics test. It seems that the new Vega architecture is actually a lot better than the solution found in the Kaby Lake-Refresh CPUs.
In fact, the RX Vega 10 scores quite similarly to the NVIDIA GeForce 940MX or the Radeon 530 which are both entry-level dedicated graphics cards.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the RX Vega 10 is far better than the UHD Graphics 620 which gives the new Ryzen 7 2700U APU a lot more bang for the buck compared to the Intel Core i5-8250U or Core i7-8550U which are very similarly performing CPUs.
The RX Vega 10 offers you roughly the same performance as an entry-level dedicated graphics card at least when it comes to benchmarks. Stay tuned for our shortly upcoming gaming tests and gameplay footage recorded using the RX Vega 10.
(laptopmedia.com, https://goo.gl/XXDPtf)