Intel is starting to talk up its next generation GPUs, dubbed Iris. The new GPU is set to debut in Haswell later this year and it seems to be quite a performer.
In the mobile segment, the Iris 5100 GPU will replace the HD 4000, used in select Ivy Bridge chips. It is said to offer a twofold performance boost over the HD 4000, all in a notebook friendly thermal envelope with a 28W TDP.
The 5000 core is reserved for Ultrabooks and it should appear in sub-15W parts. It is no slouch though – Intel says it is 1.5 times faster than the HD 4000.The 5200 is the fastest of the bunch. It is 2.5 times faster than the HD 4000, but it is reserved for high-TDP parts, north of 47W.
However, it has an even faster sibling, reserved for desktops. The Iris Pro 5200 is about 3 times faster than the HD 4000.Iris is not the end of the road for HD Graphics parts, as they will still be used with low end Pentium and Celeron chips.
At a glance, the performance gains are quite impressive and if Intel keeps it up, we’ll have to think of new Intel IGP jokes pretty soon. By offering twofold and threefold performance gains with each new generation, Intel is on track to catch up with AMD APU graphics within a couple of generations, if not less.
In addition, the fast pace of Intel’s IGP development will put further pressure on Nvidia and AMD in the low end discrete graphics segment.
