The Iris Xe Max (DG1) GPU, already shipping to OEMs, was introduced in Geekbench 5 to showcase its graphics capabilities. The presentations showed that the performance of the upcoming GPU is on par with that of an AMD Radeon RX 550.
Intel Iris Xe Max only just surpasses the GeForce MX330 GPU
Intel has been withdrawing from the market for discrete graphics cards for some time, and the Iris Xe Max marks the return of the chip manufacturer. The GPU is equipped with 96 execution units (EUs) reduced to 768 shader cores. The original Iris Xe Max test platform had a GPU with 3GB of GDDR6 memory. However, the same GPU was also used in the upcoming Asus VivoBook Flip 14 notebook with 4 GB LPDDR4X memory. It seems that this new GPU can be configured with GDDR6 or LPDDR4X memory.
Both presentations of the Xe Max listed the GPU with a maximum frequency of up to 1.5 GHz. It’s base and pulse clock speeds are currently uncertain.
Geekbench 5 is not a really reliable test when it comes to graphics performance, but it is what is available. In any case, the results should come close to what we will eventually see. The final product might work better or even worse.
The Xe Max was never intended to compete in the performance range, so it’s no big surprise that the GPU barely surpasses the Nvidia GeForce MX330. The Geekbench 5 figures showed that the Xe Max is only 6.5% faster than the GeForce MX330. In contrast, the GeForce MX350 delivered up to 16.4% more than the Intel offer. Compared to the Radeon RX 550X, the AMD GPU outperformed the Iris Xe Max by up to 6%.