The Most Powerful Integrated Graphics in Laptops: Which One Do You Need?

Integrated graphics have come a long way. The fastest ones now compete with dedicated graphics cards, while the slowest are still meant for little more than office work and video. The problem is that most spec sheets simply say “integrated graphics” or list the GPU name without any context.

So which integrated GPUs are the most powerful, and which one do you actually need? We looked at synthetic benchmarks, games and memory bandwidth, and finished with a simple guide to what each class of integrated GPU is good for.

Check out our full Top Laptop Graphics Ranking.

Contents

The ranking: 3DMark results

We use two tests from 3DMark. Wild Life Extreme runs natively on Windows, macOS and Arm, so it lets us compare Intel and AMD with Apple and Qualcomm. Time Spy is a DirectX 12 test for Windows, the same graphics API that many Windows games use, but it doesn’t run on Macs. The table is sorted by Wild Life Extreme. The numbers are averages of all laptops we have tested with each GPU, so a single laptop can be a bit faster or slower.

A few things stand out:
— Apple’s M5 Max and M4 Max are the fastest integrated GPUs in any laptop. In Wild Life Extreme, the M5 Max is almost twice as fast as the Radeon 8060S, and even the M5 Pro with a 20-core GPU is slightly ahead of it. In laptops, these chips come only in MacBook Pro configurations, which are expensive, and many Windows games don’t run on macOS.
— Among laptops with Intel and AMD processors, the Radeon 8060S is in a class of its own. In Time Spy, it is more than 2.5 times faster than the Arc 140V, and in the Lenovo Legion 7a (15″, Gen 11) (detailed review) it matched an average GeForce RTX 5060 laptop. We compared the two in Can an Integrated GPU BEAT the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060? The cut-down Radeon 8050S scored 10,106 points in Time Spy in our tests.
— Apple’s M4 Pro with a 20-core GPU comes close to the 8060S in Wild Life Extreme. The regular M5 is about 27% faster than the M4.
— Intel’s new Arc B390 is about 70% faster than the Arc 140V in both tests and about 12% ahead of the Apple M5 in Wild Life Extreme. So far, we have tested it in one laptop, the ASUS ExpertBook Ultra (B9406) (detailed review).
— The Snapdragon X Elite lands near the Radeon 780M in Wild Life Extreme, but far behind it in Time Spy. Keep in mind that game compatibility on Windows on Arm is still not as good as on x86 laptops.

Games: What to expect

Synthetic tests are useful for ranking, but games are what most people care about. Many of the laptops with integrated graphics we have tested ran the same two games at 1200p with our low presets, so we can compare them directly. Where we have tested several laptops with the same GPU, we show the range.

Two things are worth noticing. First, most mainstream integrated GPUs land in a similar range at these settings, and the difference between two laptops with the same GPU can be bigger than the difference between two GPUs. The Radeon 860M, for example, averaged 56 FPS in one laptop and 75 FPS in another. Second, the entry-level Radeon 840M and Intel Xe3 Graphics are clearly slower and are better suited to lighter games.

The fastest integrated GPUs are in a different league, so we tested them at higher resolutions:
— At 1600p on the Low preset in Black Myth: Wukong, the Radeon 8060S averaged 155 FPS. The Arc 140V in the Dell 16 Plus (DB16250) (detailed review) managed 50 FPS at the same settings.
— At 1800p, the Arc B390 averaged 77 FPS in Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Lowest) and 83 FPS in Black Myth: Wukong (Low). Arc 140V laptops reached 42–55 FPS and 43–46 FPS at the same settings, so the B390 is roughly 40% to 90% faster, depending on the game and the laptop.

We don’t include Apple and Snapdragon chips in this comparison, because we couldn’t test them in the same games with the same settings, and we haven’t tested NVIDIA’s RTX Spark yet.

The best integrated GPU for gaming

For Windows games, the Radeon 8060S is the best integrated GPU you can get in a laptop today, and the fastest one in our game tests. Apple’s M5 Max and M4 Max can be faster in games that have a Mac version, but many Windows games don’t have one. NVIDIA’s new RTX Spark chip can also be faster in some games, but laptops with it run Windows on Arm, where some popular games still don’t work.

We tested the 8060S at higher settings than the other integrated GPUs, so it gets its own table. These are the results from the Lenovo Legion 7a (15″, Gen 11) (detailed review) at the native 1600p resolution of its display:

Counter-Strike 2 (Very High) and Shadow of the Tomb Raider (High) run at the full 1600p and average well above 60 FPS. Black Myth: Wukong renders at only 25% of the resolution on Low and 60% on High, then upscales the image to 1600p. That’s why its Low result is so high.

In the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 GZ302 (detailed review), which we tested at 1080p, the 8060S ran Far Cry 6 and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla on Ultra at 92 and 95 FPS.

Memory bandwidth: Why the top chips are faster

An integrated GPU has no memory of its own. It shares the laptop’s RAM, so the speed of that memory limits how fast it can work. Here is the maximum memory bandwidth each platform supports, based on the manufacturers’ specifications. Many laptops ship with slower memory than the maximum.

The fastest integrated GPUs also have by far the most memory bandwidth. Apple’s M5 Max and M4 Max have more than twice as much as the Radeon 8060S, which in turn has about twice as much as most other chips. Bandwidth isn’t everything, but it sets the ceiling. The Arc B390 and Apple M5 have almost identical bandwidth, and they also land close to each other in Wild Life Extreme.

This also affects the laptop you choose. If a laptop with replaceable memory has only one RAM module, the integrated GPU gets half the bandwidth. Intel also only uses the Arc B390 and B370 names when the laptop has LPDDR5X memory running at 7,467 MT/s or more. With slower memory, the same chip is listed simply as “Intel Graphics”.

🆚 What about AI and TOPS?

Manufacturers like to quote AI performance in TOPS. Most of these numbers describe the NPU, a separate AI engine in the processor, not the GPU, and each company counts them a little differently. That’s why we don’t rank integrated GPUs by TOPS.

For running local AI models, such as large language models, two other things matter more: how much memory the GPU can use and how fast that memory is. Among laptops with Intel and AMD processors, the Radeon 8060S stands out here. Laptops with it come with up to 128GB of RAM, and up to 96GB can be assigned to graphics. Apple’s Pro and Max chips are also strong: the M5 Max combines up to 128GB of unified memory with 614 GB/s of bandwidth.

✅ What are integrated GPUs good for?

— Office work, web and video: every integrated GPU in this article is more than enough.
— Esports and older games: the Intel Arc 130V, 140V and 140T, and the AMD Radeon 780M and 860M, run them at 1200p with low settings. The Radeon 840M and Intel Xe3 Graphics are better suited to lighter games.
— Newer AAA games: on mainstream integrated GPUs, you will need low settings and upscaling. The Arc B390 gives you noticeably more headroom, and the Radeon 8060S can run many games at higher settings.
— Photo and video editing: light editing works on any of them. For heavier projects, choose a faster GPU and at least 32GB of RAM, because the GPU shares it.
— Local AI: a Radeon 8060S laptop with a lot of RAM, or a MacBook Pro with an M-series Pro or Max chip.

🛒 What to look for when buying

— Check the exact GPU name. “AMD Ryzen AI” or “Intel Core Ultra” doesn’t tell you much. A Radeon 840M is about half as fast as a Radeon 890M in our Time Spy results.
— Look at the memory. Fast LPDDR5X or two RAM modules give the GPU much more bandwidth than a single module.
— Get enough RAM. The GPU takes part of it, so 16GB is the minimum and 32GB is better for gaming and creative work.
— Read the review. The same GPU can perform very differently depending on the power limit and cooling. For example, the Radeon 8060S scored 11,530 points in Time Spy in the Legion 7a (15″), but 10,325 points in the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 GZ302 (detailed review), a tablet with much less room for cooling.

Source: LM Laboratory and Notebookcheck (for the Apple M4 Max, M5 Pro/Max and Spark results)

➡️ To the full Top Laptop Graphics Ranking ⬅️

Author: Simeon NikolovEditor-in-Chief at LaptopMedia.com with 20+ years of experience in testing and analyzing laptops and mobile devices.

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