> Their iGPU performance is actually getting good now.
I've only been waiting for Intel to ship a compelling iGPU since, I dunno, their "Extreme Graphics" in 2001? What on earth have their iGPU teams been doing over there for the last 20+ years?
I guess the OEMs were blinkered enough not to demand it, and Intel management was blinkered enough not to see the upside on their own.
The Intel Iris Pro graphics from about 10 years ago were actually ok. I believe they were matching the lower-end dedicated laptop GPUs of that era. The problem was Apple was the only company willing to pay for the Iris Pro Chips.
The other problem is Intel's graphics drivers for 3d gaming are a distant 3rd place. Games just haven't historically targeted their GPUs. We've had like 2 decades of games that for the most part have tested compatibility with Nvidia and AMD.
Those even were on the desktop, for a very short while, with the broadwell processor i5-5675C and i7-5775C.They were stronger than the FM2+-Apus AMD had released earlier, that Intel otherwise could not beat for years, just weaker than the following Ryzen Apus.
Ofc gone in the next generation. But those widely available might have changed things.
I think what they have been doing is focusing on what 95% of people use these things for. Just basic utility based things. The most complex thing most people will render is Google Earth. I would not be surprised if that is probably the most like focus of performance for metrics Intel is using the iGPU for.
Intel didn't take gaming seriously until very recently. They stayed focused on productivity focused applications well past the time when netbooks became viable for most use cases.
The "Intel Core Ultra 7 258V" is at least 2-3x slower than the GPU within the PlayStation 5. It is not even close, and that's last gen. Again, the APUs within modern consoles compete with desktop grade GPUs. In the case of the PS5 its roughly comparable to an RTX 2070 or Rx 6700 (better analog).
And that's telling, isn't it? Even in this space, Intel's iGPUs are totally ignored or dismissed out of hand. I say it's because they have an unending string of broken promises, saying "This'll be the time we get integrated graphics right", over and over. It's never been true, and I for one have totally wiped them from my vision due to that.
[1] https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/graphics-cards/embargo-no-p...
[2] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/lunar-lake-i...