Intel says it has no plans to take on AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ Strix Halo platform, telling us you’d be better off using a discrete GPU instead. Speaking to Club386, Intel fellow and graphics hardware expert, Tom Petersen, also described AMD’s current iGPU tech as “not that competitive.”
As we just found in our new Core Ultra Series 3 review, Intel has really upped its iGPU game. The integrated Arc B390 GPU managed to run up surprisingly fast frame rates in many of our game tests, even at 1920×1080 with high settings. However, one iGPU is notably faster – the Radeon 8060S inside AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395 chip (codenamed Strix Halo), which contains 2,560 stream processors. It might be based on last-gen AMD RDNA 3.5 GPU tech, but it still beats Intel’s new Arc iGPU into submission through brute force.
Could Intel produce a Strix Halo competitor now that it has a solid iGPU architecture under its belt? “You know, I don’t think so,” says Petersen. “If there’s a segment like that, it’s primarily discrete. I think that segment would be better served by a small, discrete GPU that’s going to be provided by third parties.”
“AMD’s current product is not that competitive, either on a power or performance-per-watt basis.”
To be fair to AMD, it’s been very careful not to market Strix Halo as a gaming GPU, despite its immense shader power. Knowing that the GPU’s size adds a big chunk of extra silicon, not to mention cost, to its top-end Ryzen AI Max+ Pro chips, AMD markets Strix Halo as a mobile workstation product instead. Conversely, Petersen says, “if you look at the relative performance of us versus AMD’s best today, it’s clear that we’re focused on integrated graphics performance, primarily for gaming.”
In this respect, Petersen tells us that “AMD’s current product is not that competitive, either on a power or a performance-per-watt basis…from my perspective, we’re clearly ahead.”
While Intel might not be planning to take on Strix Halo, it does look as though the company is readying a new beefed-up desktop GPU. According to the latest rumours, an Intel Arc B70 Pro card is on the way, based on a Battlemage BMG-G31 die.
If you want to keep up to date with all the latest Intel and AMD news, make sure you set Club386 as a Google Preferred Source and follow us on Google News. You just need to click both buttons below.
