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Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics

Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics: A Compact GPU for Everyday Tasks and Light Gaming

April 2025

Introduction

Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics is a discrete graphics card designed for compact laptops and mini-PCs. It combines low power consumption with sufficient performance for basic gaming and professional tasks. As of 2025, this model remains popular among users who value mobility and versatility. Let's examine what sets it apart from competitors and who it is suitable for.

Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The Iris Xe MAX is built on the Xe-LP (Low Power) microarchitecture, optimized for energy efficiency. The manufacturing process is 10nm Enhanced SuperFin, which reduces heat generation without compromising performance.

Unique Features:

- XeSS (Xe Super Sampling): Artificial intelligence enhances image resolution with lower resource costs, useful for gaming at 1440p.

- AV1 Support: Hardware decoding and encoding of video in modern codecs (including 8K).

- Deep Link: A technology that combines the powers of discrete and integrated Intel graphics to accelerate rendering and streaming.

Lack of RT Cores: Unlike NVIDIA RTX and AMD RDNA 3, there are no hardware ray tracing capabilities here, but software emulation is available in limited projects.

Memory: Type and Impact on Performance

Memory Type: In 2025, the Iris Xe MAX uses LPDDR5 with capacities of 4–8 GB (depending on the variant). The bandwidth reaches up to 68 GB/s, which is lower than GDDR6 used by its competitors.

Features:

- Shared Memory: Part of the system RAM is dynamically allocated for video memory, enhancing flexibility but potentially causing delays in demanding games.

- Optimization for Mobile Tasks: This amount of memory suffices for applications like Photoshop or Premiere Pro, but in games with high textures (e.g., Horizon Forbidden West), FPS drops may occur.

Gaming Performance

1080p (medium settings):

- Cyberpunk 2077: 28–35 FPS (with XeSS enabled).

- Fortnite: 45–60 FPS (Epic Settings, no ray tracing).

- Apex Legends: 50–65 FPS.

1440p: Only in less demanding titles (CS2, Valorant) – up to 90 FPS. For AAA games, it is recommended to lower the resolution to 720p.

Ray Tracing: Not supported natively. In games with software implementation (like Minecraft RTX), FPS drops to 15–20 frames.

Professional Tasks

Video Editing:

- Accelerated rendering in Adobe Premiere Pro thanks to Intel Quick Sync support.

- Encoding H.265 and AV1 in DaVinci Resolve occurs 30% faster than on integrated graphics.

3D Modeling:

- Performance in Blender and AutoCAD is modest: rendering a complex scene takes 2–3 times longer than with NVIDIA RTX 3050.

- Support for OpenCL 3.0 and oneAPI allows using the GPU for scientific computations, but cards with Tensor Cores are better suited for ML tasks.

Conclusion: The Iris Xe MAX is suitable for light editing and 2D graphics work, but it does not replace professional solutions.

Power Consumption and Heat Generation

TDP: 25–30 W. This allows for passive cooling in ultrabooks or a compact cooler in mini-PCs.

Recommendations:

- For laptops: A standard cooling system is sufficient.

- For desktop builds: A case with at least one exhaust fan.

- Avoid overheating in tight cases—thermal throttling reduces performance by 10–15%.

Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon 780M (integrated):

- Performs better in 1080p gaming (5–10% higher FPS) but requires more power.

NVIDIA GeForce MX570:

- Higher performance in Adobe applications (+20% from CUDA) but is more expensive ($450 vs. $300 for Iris Xe MAX).

Intel Arc A350M:

- A budget discrete card from Intel: better suited for gaming but has a TDP of 40–50 W.

Conclusion: The Iris Xe MAX excels in compactness and price but lags in raw performance.

Practical Tips

Power Supply: A 300 W power supply is enough for PCs with this graphics card. For laptops, aim for an adapter with at least 65 W.

Compatibility:

- Only compatible with Intel 11th generation processors and newer.

- Check driver updates through Intel Driver & Support Assistant—stable versions enhance gaming performance.

Drivers: In 2025, the situation has improved, but older projects (like GTA V) may still have image artifacts.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Energy efficiency: ideal for portable devices.

- Support for AV1 and XeSS.

- Affordable price: starting from $250 (for laptops) and $300 (desktop modules).

Cons:

- Poor performance in AAA games.

- No hardware Ray Tracing.

- Limited memory capacity.

Final Conclusion: Who is the Iris Xe MAX Suitable For?

This graphics card is a great choice for:

1. Office users who prioritize long battery life in laptops.

2. Students and content creators working on 1080p video editing.

3. Casual gamers playing indie titles or competitive shooters.

If you plan to run Cyberpunk 2077 on ultra settings or engage in 3D rendering, consider more powerful options like the Intel Arc A580 or NVIDIA RTX 4060. However, for a balance of price, performance, and mobility, the Iris Xe MAX remains one of the best options in its niche.

Basic

Label Name

Intel

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

October 2020

Model Name

Iris Xe MAX Graphics

Generation

HD Graphics-M

Base Clock

300MHz

Boost Clock

1650MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 4.0 x8

Transistors

Unknown

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

Intel

Process Size

10 nm

Architecture

Generation 12.1

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

4GB

Memory Type

LPDDR4X

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

128bit

Memory Clock

2133MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

68.26 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

39.60 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

79.20 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

5.069 TFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

633.6 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

2.585 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

768

L2 Cache

1024KB

TDP

25W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_1)

Shader Model

6.4

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

2.585 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon HD 7950 Monica BIOS 1

2.785 +7.7%

FirePro V8800

2.693 +4.2%

Iris Xe MAX Graphics

2.585

GeForce GTX 870M

2.547 -1.5%

Radeon Pro V5300X

2.509 -2.9%