Recently, as we've been testing devices with integrated graphics chips, one common thread has emerged. Integrated graphics are no longer the also-ran of the mobile world, and modern CPUs and APUs with graphics capabilities have never been this good. AMD has historically been good at this, but recently with the Steam Deck and Ryzen Z-series chips for handhelds, they've been on top of their game for performance per watt. Intel switched to Arc graphics on its mobile and desktop CPUs fairly recently, and the results for those have been impressive as well.

Apple Silicon and Qualcomm's Snapdragon Elite CPUs are also catching up, and the future of integrated graphics is very exciting indeed. Tons of new chips have been released in the last year, and plenty more are coming soon from AMD and Intel. And then we've got even more to look forward to. Apple's M5 chips are less than a year away; Qualcomm has some gaming handheld chips in the works, and Intel's Panther Lake isn't far off.

But for now, we're testing a selection of iGPU-equipped laptops, with a mix of Intel's Lunar Lake, Arrow Lake Mobile, and AMD's Strix Point. We've also got a few data points from the Apple M4 and Qualcomm's Snapdragon Ultra X, to show roughly where those fit into the mix. Again, the thing this testing has shown me is that iGPUs are exciting, and I look forward to the new devices using them, particularly the upcoming PC gaming handhelds.

The competition is fierce

Intel, AMD, Apple, and Qualcomm are all powerful competitors for the mobile crown

The desktop CPU market might be fairly boring right now, with how far ahead AMD's Ryzen CPUs are, but the mobile landscape is very much alive and kicking. Qualcomm's Snapdragon Elite chips and Apple Silicon both show that Arm is a force to be reckoned with for general computing tasks, Intel is firing on all cylinders with Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake mobile, and AMD's Ryzen AI APUs are powerful beasts.

The rise of PC gaming handhelds has shown that PC gamers will sacrifice frame rate chasing for portability. Sure, handhelds are smaller than laptops, but they're also thicker, and after carrying both around, they're not that much lighter. These APU or iGPU solutions are power-constrained but run at similar clocks to discrete graphics cores and use varying amounts of the shared system memory as VRAM.

For example, the Radeon 880M in the Strix Point chip we tested has a 15W TDP, 400MHz base clock, and 2,900MHz boost clock. The Intel Arc 140T has a 35W TDP, 300MHz base clock, and 2,350MHz boost clock. The Strix Point chip is more powerful overall, even at a lower TDP, but the gap isn't that big, showing how much of a jump Arc Graphics-M has been for Intel's efforts.

We've got Intel's Arc 130V, 140V, and 140T on test, along with the Radeon 880M, and some data from the GPU cores in the Apple M4 chip and Qualcomm's Snapdragon Ultra X. What really surprised me is that all of the iGPUs managed a decent showing, and the gap between the bottom and top wasn't that far.

Time for some gaming

It's truly impressive how powerful iGPUs can be

To test out these iGPUs, we turn to the usual trio of 3DMark synthetic benchmarks that we always run on laptop tests. This gives us a good starting point, and as we have a wealth of prior results, we can see the progression between generations. All the chips in the test performed well, with the Intel Arc 130V and Radeon 880M bringing up the rear and the Arc 140V and 140T powering ahead on these workloads.

That prowess in synthetic benchmarks didn't translate to in-game benchmarks or gameplay, and the AMD Radeon 880M was ahead in every gaming-related test. The graphics cores here are fantastic for their TDP, and this isn't even the flagship Strix Halo APU that's in the Asus Z13 gaming tablet right now and coming to plenty of other devices later this year.

What really impressed me was how playable all these games were, even at higher settings. Turning down settings to get over the magic 60FPS target was possible for most titles, although Cyberpunk 2077 was still an issue. Maybe that's no surprise, as this game was a tech demo at launch for Nvidia's RTX technologies, and it's an impressive feat that it runs at all on iGPUs. Still, the Radeon 880M almost managed it with 57 FPS and would have gone past it with AFMF (AMD Fluid Motion Frames) to generate extra frames in between the rendered ones.

The leap in integrated graphics power over the last year or so is impressive. Only a couple of years ago, Intel's 13th-generation mobile processors were getting 1/2 to 2/3rds scores on 3DMark's TimeSpy. It's worth noting a few other things, including that Shadow of the Tomb Raider wasn't running natively on the M4 processor but used Apple's Rosetta translation layer. As more games get native ports, including Cyberpunk 2077, we'll circle back and fill in some of the missing blanks here.

Not long ago, it took discrete laptop GPUs to get the scores these iGPUs can reach

With discrete GPUs being fairly boring this generation and prohibitively expensive, integrated graphics have a real shot at gaining mindshare. The power per watt in these mobile CPUs and APUs is truly amazing, allowing for 1080p, console-level 30 FPS gaming in most titles with ease, and 60 FPS smooth gaming by sacrificing some graphical settings. Even at lower settings, the smaller displays of laptops and handhelds means the drop in fidelity isn't as noticeable, and you can still get an enjoyable gaming experience from them.