Conclusion
There are new players in the field of integrated graphics performance on the desktop PC for 2022. You don’t even need a dedicated GPU with these integrated options. Intel has recently released its brand new 12th Generation Alder Lake CPUs. Sitting at the top is the Intel Core i9-12900K with the Intel UHD Graphics 770 iGPU on board providing integrated graphics. From the competition, AMD has also released its Ryzen 5000 series APUs. Sitting at the top is the AMD Ryzen 7 5700G APU with AMD Radeon RX Vega 8 onboard providing integrated graphics.
With both of these CPUs providing the best-integrated graphics experience in their category, we had to put them head-to-head against each other to see how well they game, and how well they are at compute performance. In gaming we tested at 720p, and 1080p at low and high game settings, we also used FidelityFX Super Resolution FSR where applicable. We also threw a few compute workloads at it to see how they work on OpenCL and encoding video.
Intel 12900K Summary
The Intel Core i9-12900K is a hybrid CPU, sporting Performance and Efficiency Cores with an RCP pricing of $589. It consists of 8 P-Cores and 8 E-Cores for a total of 16 cores and 24 threads. Our review of the CPU proves that it is hands down the fastest CPU on the desktop right now in single-threading performance and multi-threading performance. It accelerates all workloads and even allows faster gaming performance on fast discrete GPUs compared to the competition. By all means, you would think this would help improve integrated graphics gaming performance as well.
The 12900K utilizes the Intel UHD Graphics 770 iGPU based on Intel’s Xe LP Gen 2.2 architecture. There are multiple clock speed variants of the UHD 770, and the 12900K uses the fastest implementation of that which operates at a boost of 1550MHz. It consists of 32 Execution Units, 256 Shader Units, 8 ROPs, and 16 TMUs. It also supports Intel QuickSync Version 8 for hardware video decoding and encoding.
AMD 5700G Summary
On the competition’s front, we find the AMD Ryzen 7 5700G APU (Cezanne) which is a traditional design but based on the latest and greatest AMD Zen 3 architecture. This means the CPU part of it is very modern and up-to-date with AMD’s latest generation of CPU architecture. It has 8 Cores and 16 Threads. We will have a full review of the APU coming up, stay tuned. The MSRP for the APU is $359. By that fact alone you’d think the 12900K would be faster at integrated graphics performance, as it is the more expensive offering.
The 5700G utilizes the AMD Radeon RX Vega 8 Radeon Graphics GPU based on AMD’s Raven Ridge GCN 5.0 Vega architecture. There are varying clock speed differences out there for this, and on the 5700G, it is clocked at a boost of 2000MHz. It consists of 8 CUs, 512 Shader Cores, 8 ROPs, and 32 TMUs. It supports AMD VCN 2.2 for hardware video decoding and encoding.
Gaming Performance Summary
We started by testing gaming performance at 720p (1280×720) because quite frankly this is the sweet spot for these integrated graphics performance. Plus, 720p is a common resolution for laptop gaming. However, we did test low gaming settings and high gaming settings at 720p, and also we did test 1080p to really push them both and see what’s capable. We utilized FidelityFX Super Resolution FSR where available, which did work on both iGPUs.
As you look back at the gaming performance we experienced you will see a trend. The AMD Ryzen 7 5700G with Vega 8 outperformed the Intel Core i9-12900K with Intel UHD Graphics 770 by a large amount. This really is clear cut across the board at 720p and 1080p, and every game setting. The differences were not small either, there were very large percentage differences, some over 100%.
With the AMD Ryzen 7 5700G with Vega 8 performing so much better, it actually allowed some games to be very playable at 720p at low and even medium or high settings. It struggled more at 1080p, but even still there were some games playable at low settings at 1080p with it. This is amazing to be honest, especially when you look at how the Intel UHD 770 did on the 12900K compared to it.
Vega 8 Performance
With the Ryzen 7 5700G and Vega 8, the brand new game Dying Light 2 was just on the edge of being able to play it. However, this brand new game was a struggle on it also. Even at low settings and 720p performance was in the 20s. This is bad news as far as future gaming goes on these integrated options, they are only going to get more demanding. Dying Light 2 is an amazing-looking game, very demanding, and utilizes modern gaming features. The Vega 8 struggling in this newly released game is not a good sign.
Forza Horizon 5 though is wonderful, we could play this game well above 60FPS on the Vega 8 at 720p. It allowed us to raise the game settings up to High at 720p and experience a very smooth game that looked very good. Vega 8 did amazingly well in Battlefield 2042 as well, allowing us to play at 60FPS average at 720p low, or to raise the image quality up to medium or high.
Cyberpunk 2077 was even somewhat playable around 40FPS at low settings, and with FSR was much smoother. Horizon Zero Dawn was actually very smooth at Favor Performance at 720p and FSR brought it up to 60FPS. By raising the quality to Favor Quality and using FSR performance was above 40FPS. Even Watch Dogs Legion was playable at 720p on low or medium settings.
At 1080p the 5700G with Vega 8 did struggle a lot more. However, once again Forza Horizon 5 was very playable at low or medium settings at 1080p. Battlefield 2042 was around 30FPS. Cyberpunk 2077 with FSR was around 30FPS and so was Horizon Zero Dawn. This shows that some easy-going games would be playable at 1080p on lower settings.
Intel UHD 770 Performance
The Intel UHD 770 really tanked in every single game and at every resolution and game setting. There was maybe only one or two games where it was somewhat acceptable, and that was in Forza Horizon 5 and Battlefield 2042 at low settings, but just barely. Otherwise, every other single game was not even playable at 720p and low settings with it. At 1080p it was completely useless, even with FSR.
In Dying Light 2, even at the lowest possible settings at 720p it only averaged 18FPS. Forza Horizon 5 was one of the better performing games, at low it was around 33FPS on average. However, this game can go lower to a “Very Low” setting, and then performance was in the 40s and much smoother, though the game looked terrible at that setting.
In Battlefield 2042 performance was around 40FPS on average, but the problem is the game was very laggy and choppy, as it had trouble loading in textures smoothly. Cyberpunk 2077 was pointless on it, completely unplayable and FSR did not help. Horizon Zero Dawn was choppy as well, and even with FSR just wasn’t a good experience. Watch Dogs Legion was around 24FPS at the lowest setting, and not playable.
FSR Performance
AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution FSR sounds like it would be the key to making integrated graphics performance like this playable. You would think this would be the key to making a better gaming experience on Vega 8 and Intel UHD 770, right? Well, the problem is turning on FSR at 720p resolution is a really bad experience visually.
720p is already a low resolution, and with FSR sampling under that and scaling up, it just looks bad. The games that supported FSR looked very blurry with FSR enabled at 720p, even on “Ultra Quality” FSR. It was literally like looking through a jar of vaseline, it was so bad that some games like Cyberpunk 2077 were hard to tell where you were going in the world and what objects were what. It was a real mess.
So while FSR does actually add to performance on Vega 8 by a good degree in some instances, visually it’s a joke. You just can’t use it. Therefore those performance gains are pointless if the game looks like garbage.
Now, at 1080p it isn’t as bad. It’s still blurry, it still doesn’t look good, but it’s not near as bad as 720p. At 1080p FSR can be the difference in bringing performance up for Vega 8 and allow you to maybe play a game at 1080p. But it really isn’t a preferred experience.
As for the Intel UHD 770, while FSR does work on it, it is not optimized well for performance. FSR really does not benefit it enough in performance as it does for Vega 8. And again, at 720p it’s just not usable, and at 1080p it doesn’t offer enough performance to justify the loss in image quality.
Compute Performance
There are other aspects beyond gaming, and so we tested both integrated graphics for compute performance and video encoding performance. By far the Intel UHD 770 with Intel QuickSync is superior for video encoding performance. It was 36% faster than Vega 8 and brought our render time down by 3 minutes. Add that up too much longer videos and it adds up over time. The point-blank fact is that the Intel QuickSync decoder/encoder is better on the Intel UHD 770, and supports AVI1 decoding as well. The VCN 2.2 decoder/encoder on Vega 8 does not support AVI decoding and is not as recent as is found on RDNA2.
However, when it comes to raw OpenCL and Vulkan performance the Ryzen 7 5700G with Vega 8 can be faster, depending on the OpenCL implementation. In Geekbench 5’s compute benchmark Vega 8 was 92% faster at OpenCL and 126% faster at Vulkan workloads. If you are doing compute-based workloads and using the subset of OpenCL supported on Vega 8, it is faster. However, the Intel UHD 770 interestingly has one thing going for it, OpenCL 3.0 support, and given the right circumstances could be faster? But that’s the key, the right circumstances, and that just all depends on your needs for compute performance. Overall, the Vega 8 has superior hardware specs to accelerate compute workloads faster.
Final Points
Despite the Intel Core i9-12900K being Intel’s fastest CPU on the desktop based on the new 12th Gen Alder Lake architecture, it lags behind quite far on integrated graphics performance. The Intel UHD 770, while the fastest implementation on 12900K, just cannot keep up with even AMD’s two-generation old Vega 8 architecture baked into the Ryzen 7 5700G APU.
Vega 8 may not be based on RDNA, but apparently, Vega is fast enough to destroy the latest integrated graphics from Intel CPUs on the desktop. This really makes you think how RDNA2 on an APU could destroy performance further on the integrated graphics performance realm in the future.
That said, seeing a game like Dying Light 2 which has just come out struggle as much as it did even on Vega 8 shows that integrated graphics will be challenged for future games. Here’s a brand new game in 2022 that we just really cannot play on integrated graphics. In addition to that, we also had some trouble in some games with the Intel UHD 770 even being able to run, which could be driver-related. We had intended to also include Far Cry 6 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 in this review, but both games would not run on the Intel UHD 770 at all.
This shows that it will be the game that determines what is playable. There are plenty of easy-going games that aren’t as graphically demanding, and those can be very playable. When we look at the 5700G with Vega 8 we see it as a graphics solution that can play 720p games at low to medium very well, and maybe even high in some games. At 1080p it’s mostly going to be in the low settings unless you can enable FSR which may boost it to medium in some games, but just barely. The IQ will suffer.
As for the Intel UHD 770, it is really just pointless as far as gaming goes. It is not the iGPU to have if gaming is your goal. Get the cheapest dedicated GPU you can get cause anything will be better than the UHD 770 for gaming.