Will Ice Lake be a big leap for 13 inch gaming?

[playtech1]

Like many I have been looking forward to Ice Lake coming to the 13 (or perhaps 14) inch MBP and bringing graphics performance necessary to play modern games, albeit on low settings.

But having taken a look at the numbers, I am not so sure it will be quite the leap everyone is expecting, unless Intel refresh their Ice Lake lineup before it goes into the MBP.

Current top spec 13inch MBP has the top-spec 8th Gen U processor i7-8569U, which has the following graphics specs

Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655
Gen 9.5
28 Watt chip
48 Execution Units (EUs)
300 to 1200 MHz
128GB eDRAM Cache
2133MHz LPDDR3 RAM
0.92 TFLOPS (FP32)

VS the top Ice Lake 10th Gen U Processor, i7-1068G7, which has

Intel Iris Plus G7 Graphics
Gen 10
28 Watt chip
64 Execution Units (EUs)
300 to 1100 MHz
No eDRAM Cache, but 3 MB dedicated L3 cache
2666MHz(?) DDR4
1.12 TFLOPS (FP32)

Which means when compared to Ice Lake G7 the current MBP has:
75% of the EUs
82% of the 1.12 TFLOPs peak performance
80% of the RAM speed (assuming the MBP moves to DDR4 like the 16 inch)
The eDRAM cache
100Mhz faster turbo

Unless the Gen 10 graphics architecture brings a significant boost that is not reflected in the specs, I think we are looking at a nice bump of about 25%, but it's not going to be revolutionary. I view 720p @ 30fps as the starting point for playable gaming and I'm not convinced this will move many games which don't reach that now into that territory. The lack of eDRAM cache in particular concerns me, as that was touted as the reason why the current MBPs have much better GPU performance than other laptops using Intel graphics and seemed important enough that it was doubled from 64MB to 128MB between revisions. Perhaps Intel will release a version with eDRAM for Apple?

 

[Ries]

Tigerlake Y/U has been moved into 2020, supposedly the gen12 iGPU is 2x of icelake.

 

[playtech1]

Tigerlake Y/U has been moved into 2020, supposedly the gen12 iGPU is 2x of icelake.

That would be a worthwhile boost, although I'm guessing we are talking late 2020 and so probably mid 2021 before Apple gets around to sticking Tiger Lake into its laptops.

If Apple increases the MBP's size to 14 inch then there should be room for a lightweight GPU, perhaps a cut down Navi part.

I could actually see Apple going with a Navi GPU to differentiate the 13 inch Pro from the Air. The Air on Ice Lake will probably get the Ice Lake 4 core 8 thread Y processor, so with the core count difference eliminated, the Pro needs something on its spec sheet to get buyers to trade up.

 

[limo79]

According to benchmarks available on Notebookcheck website:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Iris-...lus-Graphics-650_9869_9902_7655.247598.0.html

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Iris-...ics-G7-Ice-Lake-64-EU_9902_9866.247598.0.html

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Iris-...lus-Graphics-640_9902_9869_7656.247598.0.html

current Iris Plus 645 GPU is on the similar level like Intel Iris Plus Graphics G4 (Ice Lake 48 EU) GPU level.

Iris Plus Graphics G7 (Ice Lake 64 EU):
3DMark - Time Spy Score 2560x1440: ~945 points
Rocket League (2017) - high 1920x1080: ~43 fps
The Witcher (2015) - medium 1366x768: ~35 fps

Iris Plus Graphics G4 (Ice Lake 48 EU):
3DMark - Time Spy Score 2560x1440: ~699 points
Rocket League (2017) - high 1920x1080: ~20.3 fps
The Witcher (2015) - medium 1366x768: ~24.5 fps

Iris Plus Graphics 650 :
3DMark - Time Spy Score 2560x1440: ~623 points
Rocket League (2017) - high 1920x1080: ~38.9 fps
The Witcher (2015) - medium 1366x768: ~ -- fps

Iris Plus Graphics 640:
3DMark - Time Spy Score 2560x1440: ~494 points
Rocket League (2017) - high 1920x1080: ~28 fps
The Witcher (2015) - medium 1366x768: ~13.4 fps

Assuming that Apple use a top level CPU we can expect G7 in MBP 13" or boosted version of G7 chip (but this is an extra cost so it would be better to lower prices). However from my perspective the biggest change in current Ice Lake GPU compared to Iris Plus is using much faster LPDDR4X-3733 MHz memory (low-power version) so internal GPU <-> memory bandwith bottleneck is significantly reduced.

Another big change is Intel WiFi6 AX201 card that has bandwidth 2x faster (in reality) than current MBP wireless solution. This is the biggest issue of the MBP 16 (really do not understand why Apple did not use Intel chips this time).

 

[leman]

Another big change is Intel WiFi6 AX201 card that has bandwidth 2x faster (in reality) than current MBP wireless solution. This is the biggest issue of the MBP 16 (really do not understand why Apple did not use Intel chips this time).

Just a quick comment on this: the MBP, despite it still being on WiFi-5 has faster WIFi than any WiFi-6 laptop I've seen. It has more antennas and better antenna arrangement. WiFi-6 is still too new. There are no high-end solutions yet available.

 

[limo79]

This is not actual since Apple lose a technology leadership in many areas (design, usability, technology in current products). Antenna arrangement does not compensate new Intel chip performance (new protocol / standard) on AX routers (eg. Netgear Nighthawk RAX120) router:

MSI Prestige 15 A10SC: https://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-...besten-Dell-XPS-15-Alternativen.442702.0.html

Networking
iperf3 Client (receive) TCP 1 m 4M x10
MSI Prestige 15 A10SC Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200	1291 (min: 1212, max: 1379) MBit/s ∼

iperf3 Client (transmit) TCP 1 m 4M x10
MSI Prestige 15 A10SC Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200	1374 (min: 720, max: 1484) MBit/s

Apple MacBook Pro 13 2019: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple...formance-but-no-real-innovation.436806.0.html

Networking
iperf3 Client (receive) TCP 1 m 4M x10
Apple MacBook Pro 13 2019 i5 4TB3 Broadcom 802.11ac	730 MBit/s

iperf3 Client (transmit) TCP 1 m 4M x10
Apple MacBook Pro 13 2019 i5 4TB3 Broadcom 802.11ac	710 MBit/s

 

[playtech1]

Assuming that Apple use a top level CPU we can expect G7 in MBP 13" or boosted version of G7 chip (but this is an extra cost so it would be better to lower prices). However from my perspective the biggest change in current Ice Lake GPU compared to Iris Plus is using much faster LPDDR4X-3733 MHz memory (low-power version) so internal GPU <-> memory bandwith bottleneck is significantly reduced.

If they use memory of that speed it would be great, but is that realistic?

I think the rest of your post pretty much agrees with my conclusions - namely the Ice Lake is not a radical step up from current gen Iris Plus 655 graphics.

 

[limo79]

This memory is used in latest Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 (Ice Lake G7 version), Dell XPS and Lenovo C940 for example. It is much improvement over DDR3/LPDDR3. Previously LPDDR4 chips were not available before and speed jump is really high over last generation (even assuming that delay memory latencies can be higher and frequency divider ratio). From the technical point of view new memory standard is easier to route, control and should be more immune to noise, crosstalks, signal distortion assuming lower current drawing than typical DDR4 chips well known from Dell XPS 15. If we talk about real performance perceived by typical user I suppose that this is a good compromise - consider it as optimal solution for future OS / video requirements keeping TDP on the reasonable level. To conclude I do not consider it as gaming chip at all especially that it share one BGA package (cooling heatpipe) so under high load GPU clock is limited and lowered. But when you are going to buy laptop for next years then you should not worry about OS animations, GUI peformance and video codecs support to watch movie content. From the designer point of view such single chip save a lot of space on PCB so laptop mainboard can be much smaller and compact (battery capacity can be increased and there is more room for audio speakers).