AMD Ryzen 4000 iGPU Almost Catches Nvidia's GeForce MX250

[harlan4096]

The GeForce MX250's days might be numbered.

A Weibo user has reportedly tested the Ryzen 7 4800U's integrated graphics, and the results are better than you might expect.

The Ryzen 4000-series (codename Renoir) mobile APUs leverage AMD's most recent Zen 2 microarchitecture, but the chips still rely on the Vega GPU microarchitecture for graphics. On top of that, the design suffered a minor regression. While Picasso, the Renoir's predecessor, has up to 10 Compute Units (CUs), Renoir maxes out at eight CUs. Renoir does use TSMC's cutting-edge 7nm FinFET manufacturing process, so there are improvements in other areas.

Picasso's iGPU has a peak boost clock of 1,400 MHz. Renoir boosts up to 1,750 MHz, a very noticeable 25% improvement. As opposed to Picasso and its support for DDR4-2400, Renoir natively supports DDR4-3200, and we all know how AMD's APUs love faster RAM.
AMD Ryzen 7 4800U vs. Nvidia GeForce MX250

Naturally, the Weibo user pulled in laptops to test the mobile-targeted chip, more specifically different Lenovo Xiaoxin laptops. The user highlighted that the Ryzen 7 4800U-powered laptop is an engineering prototype so performance for the retail product could differ.

The Weibo user pitted the Ryzen 7 4800U against two Intel rivals, the Core i7-1065G7 (Ice Lake), which has the Iris Plus Graphics G7, and the Core i5-10210U (Comet Lake) that's accompanied by Nvidia's GeForce MX250. There's a comparison between Ryzen 7 4800U to AMD's own Ryzen 5 4600U chip as well.

Xiaoxin 15 2020 Xiaoxin Pro 13 Xiaoxin Pro 13 Xiaoxin Pro 13

Processor
Intel Core i7-1065G7 Intel Core i5-10210U AMD Ryzen 5 4600U Ryzen 7 4800U
iGPU / GPU
Iris Plus Graphics G7 Nvidia GeForce MX250 Radeon Graphics (6 CUs) Radeon Graphics (8 CUs)
RAM
16GB DDR4-3200 16GB DDR4-2666 16GB DDR4-3200 16GB DDR4-3200

All the Lenovo Xiaoxin laptops are equipped with 16GB of DDR4 RAM. Only the memory speed varies between each model. The devices with the Ice Lake and Renoir parts have DDR4-3200 modules while the Comet Lake model comes with DDR4-2666 sticks. Aside from the obvious difference of twice the cores for the Ryzen processor that will benefit it in CPU-heavy titles, it's a pretty fair fight considering that each processor is paired with the official maximum memory speed supported.

The tester used generic benchmarks, such as 3DMark Time Spy and Fire Strike and real-world gaming tests conducted at 1080p resolution. The quality settings varied depending on game.

Benchmark Results

Time Spy Fire Strike Counter-Strike: Global Offensive League of Legends Assassin's Creed: Odyssey Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Intel Core i5-10210U + Nvidia GeForce MX250
1,130 3,664 156.67 >90 28 24
AMD Ryzen 7 4800U
1,159 3,378 97.87 >90 25 21
AMD Ryzen 5 4600U
954 2,892 95.87 >90 22 18
Intel Core i7-1065G7
761 2,453 61.93 68 15 0

In terms of generic benchmarks, the Ryzen 7 4800U was up to 2.6% faster than the GeForce MX250 in Time Spy; however, the GeForce MX250 beat the Ryzen 7 4800U by up to 8.5% in the old-school Fire Strike benchmark.

In Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the GeForce MX250 delivered up to 60.1% higher average frame rates than the Ryzen 7 4800U. Despite the Ryzen 7 4800U having two additional CUs, the difference between it and the Ryzen 5 4600U was around 2%. The reviewer didn't list the exact results for League of Legends but claimed that the GeForce MX250 and two Ryzen parts perform similarly.

The GeForce MX250 outperformed the Ryzen 7 4800U by 12% and 14.3% in the Assassin's Creed: Odyssey and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, respectively. To be fair, the two aforementioned titles are CPU-intensive games, and that's where the Ryzen 7 4800U's four extra cores help push the chip forward. The Intel Core i5-10210U is a quad-core, eight-thread part after all. However, you can't really blame AMD for offering more cores per chip as the chipmaker has worked hard to develop a microarchitecture to squeeze double the cores out of the Zen 2 silicon.

Laptop manufacturers are fond of the GeForce MX250 because it's a cheap discrete graphics solution that provides better graphics performance than integrated graphics. However, Renoir is starting to break that mold. While AMD's latest U-series APUs haven't completely reached parity or surpassed the GeForce MX250, based on these numbers, they are getting there.
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