Intel's Gen11 Integrated Graphics Outperforms AMD's Vega 10 in Ashes of the Singularity

An anonymous user has tested one of Intel's upcoming quad-core Ice Lake processors with Gen11 (Generation 11) graphics with the popular Ashes of the Singularity (AoTS) benchmark tool. These results come on the heels of Intel's recent disclosure of more details of the Gen11 graphics architecture.

Credit: Ashes of the SingularityCredit: Ashes of the Singularity

Benchmarks of the Gen11 iGPU (Integrated Graphics Processing Unit) first showed up last month in the GFXBench and CompuBench databases. Needless to say, the results were pretty surprising. Gen11 proved to be a significant upgrade over Intel's previous Gen9 iGPU and even managed to compete with rival AMD solutions, such as the Vega 10 graphics that power the Ryzen 7 2700U and the Vega 11 graphics in the Ryzen 5 2400G. However, synthetic benchmarks aren't always reliable, but today we get the first glimpse of the Gen11's performance in a real-world scenario.

AverageNormal BatchMedium BatchHeavy Batch
Vega 11 (Ryzen 5 2400G)29.3 FPS35.4 FPS29.3 FPS24.9 FPS
Nvidia GeForce MX15025.6 FPS28.2 FPS26.7 FPS22.5 FPS
Nvidia GeForce MX13022.6 FPS27.7 FPS23.1 FPS18.7 FPS
Gen1115.1 FPS
20.4 FPS
15.7 FPS
11.8 FPS
Vega 10 (Ryzen 7 2700U)14.9 FPS18.4 FPS15.6 FPS12.1 FPS
UHD Graphics 630 (i7-8700)
11.9 FPS
14.2 FPS
12.2 FPS
10.1 FPS
UHD Graphics 620 (i5-8250U)9.9 FPS12.4 FPS10.7 FPS7.8 FPS

The processor in question is a Hyper-Threaded quad-core Ice Lake chip. The processor apparently has a 1.3GHz base clock, which leads us to think that it's a low-powered part. Additionally, the "LP" suffix in the GPU description seemingly confirms our assumption. The unknown chip was benchmarked with the latest revision (2.77.54698.0) of the game on the Low (1080p) preset using the DirectX 11 API (Application Programming Interface).

Based on the Ashes of the Singularity benchmark, Gen11 outperforms Intel's own UHD Graphics 630 by up to 26.89 percent. When compared to AMD, Gen11 is slightly (1.34 percent) faster than Vega 10 but falls way behind Vega 11 by around 94.04 percent. In comparison to the mid-range Nvidia GeForce MX130 part, Gen11 performs 49.67 percent slower.

The Ashes of the Singularity results appear to contradict the ones from the previous GFXBench and CompuBench leaks. There are a few caveats that could explain the discrepancy between both results. For starters, the Ice Lake processor in the GFXBench and CompuBench tests seemed to feature Iris Plus Graphics 940 while the chip in the Ashes of the Singularity tests clearly has UHD Graphics onboard. But it must also be taken into account that it's a low-powered model, which means it's probably a mobile processor for laptops.