Intel UHD Graphics 750 i9-11900K Xe Game Performance

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Conclusion

Intel’s new 11th Gen Core Desktop CPUs known as Rocket Lake brings a new architecture not only with the CPU cores but also in terms of integrated graphics. With Intel Xe graphics architecture on board now called Intel UHD Graphics 750, the upper-tier of Intel CPUs have improved performance. The quoted performance uplift from last generation’s Intel UHD Graphics 630 was 50%. However, we did see a wide range of improvements, some less, and some much more. But is it enough?

Performance Uplift

In the games, we tested we went all the way back to Grand Theft Auto V, and then forward with Far Cry 5, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Wolfenstein Youngblood, Assassins Creed Valhalla, and Hitman 3. In older games, like Grand Theft Auto V the new Intel UHD Graphics 750 actually performs admirably. It allows a “Very High” experience at 720p or a “Normal” experience at 1080p. But that’s where the line is drawn. Once you move up to games from 2018 and onwards, it gets very hard for the new Intel UHD Graphics 750.

Far Cry 5 is only playable at 720p with the lowest settings, and maybe normal settings. Try 1080p though, and you are out of luck. With even newer games, it gets even worse. Shadow of the Tomb Raider was not playable at 720p with the lowest settings. Wolfenstein Youngblood was playable 720p and the Low setting, but that is it. Assassins Creed Valhalla is out of the question completely, and Hitman 3 is playable at 720p with low settings or some moderately medium settings.

One commonality here is that 720p seems to be the preferred resolution for gaming on the Intel UHD Graphics 750. At 1080p anything newer than Grand Theft Auto V is just out of the question. Newer games also struggle even at 720p, and there will be games, like Assassins Creed Valhalla that are just completely unplayable period.

The performance uplift of the Intel UHD Graphics 750 versus Intel UHD Graphics 630 is actually quite large. We saw 50%+ advantages. We saw some at even 70% advantage. We’d say the Intel quoted uplift is actually a little low, we certainly saw some games that it was much much higher. It really depends on the game, or rather, the age of the game.

The problem with the uplift is that if you’re at 16 or 17FPS, and you get an uplift of 50%, well you are still at only 25FPS and the game is unplayable. This happened a lot. Even though we got big gains, the actual framerate was still below 30FPS in many situations, and just downright unplayable. It’s just not enough.

Problems

We said earlier that there were more games we tried and tried we did. We wanted to include more games here and had intended to, but we had a lot of problems with the Intel UHD Graphics 750. We simply could not get Horizon Zero Dawn to run. The game crashed during the opening cinematic every single time and just would not work. With the Intel UHD Graphics 630, the game launched, but the benchmark was completely broken with an indescribable myriad of drug-induced messed-up textures and polygons.

Another game that did not work well was Ghost Recon Breakpoint. We could not get the game to run at all on either core in Vulkan mode. In DX mode it ran on the Intel UHD Graphics 630, but with the Intel UHD Graphics 750, it once again had missing textures and objects, and polygons. It was bad. We also wanted to include Watch Dogs Legion, and while we got it to run on the Intel UHD Graphics 750 once again the graphics were completely borked. The entire game looked like it was being rendered in 16 color mode, yes 16 whole colors. It was a weird thing. We also tried Dirt 5, but the game told us that we were missing a required 3D feature, and it just wouldn’t run.

In addition to these issues, we experienced a lot of flashing textures, flashing shadows, weird 3D corruption, sometimes weird red lines across the screen, and other odd anomalies like the screen flashing to bright white inside games a lot. Oh, and that screen blanking to black? Yeah, we got that a lot too. The whole experience was unstable, to say the least.

Will it run Cyberpunk 2077? Well, the Intel UHD Graphics 630 did not do well, we got single-digit performance in-game at 720p and the lowest, and I mean lowest, possible settings. With the Intel UHD Graphics 750 it improved performance to 11FPS. Yeah, just completely not playable.

The Final Points

At the end of the day, the new Intel UHD Graphics 750 in the high-end Core i9 11th Gen Rocket Lake CPUs is a big improvement over the last generation. The new architecture, the higher clock speed, the more execution units, it does work. We actually experienced higher performance uplifts than Intel put down in its documentation. It also has improved encoding performance with Intel Quick Sync, which can be advantageous to a lot of people.

On the downside though, the uplift still isn’t enough to actually play and enjoy modern games. It can barely provide 720p “Low” game settings in most modern games. Some, it cannot even provide a playable experience with that. It does best with older games or easy running games. If you game on a game that is older, been around the block a while, it should do ok at 720p, and maybe even 1080p at low settings. Games like GTAV, run pretty well, and we’d imagine something like CS:GO and other CS games and games like World of Warcraft would as well.

Games of that caliber and age are about the best type of game you can hope for a playable experience on the Intel UHD Graphics 750, and it should be better than the last generation by a good deal. The Intel UHD Graphics 750 is a nice push in the right direction but still falls short of being useful for PC gamers. Though the Intel Quick Sync is nice and could help with your video renders. You are still going to want a dedicated GPU ultimately, even the lowest tier of any GPU from AMD or NVIDIA will provide a huge difference in the gaming experience. But hey, for office use? Sure, it works just fine.

Discussion

Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

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