To say that Intel’s HD Graphics are good enough for discrete class gaming is a lie, but to say that Intel’s HD Graphics have improved massively over the past few years is very much the truth. In early 2015, Q1 to be exact, Intel will bring its 8th generation of HD graphics to the table with the 14nm Braswell parts, further improving graphics performance for the masses. For those who don’t know Braswell will be the successor to the current Bay Trail line of products. This means Braswell will mainly be for the compact and mobile segments (such as net-tops, tablets, notebooks, chromebooks, etc.) where having stronger integrated graphics is vital because discrete graphics are not viable options due to cost, power and thermal requirements. Intel’s 8th Generation HD graphics will come with 16 EUs (execution units) which means they are fairly modest: the HD 4600 GT2 graphics on desktop chips like the Core i7 4770K have 20 EUs. However, compared to current Bay Trail chips this is a massive upgrade – they have just 4.
The 16 EUs means the Intel Braswell chips will have similar graphics performance to Intel’s Ivy Bridge desktop parts which had 16 EUs too, of course expect the frequencies to be a little slower as Braswell chips have to scale within smaller thermal envelopes. The Intel 8th Generation HD Graphics will offer full hardware support for video encoding and decoding and possible 4K support although this is still to be confirmed. Impressively the Braswell chips will be able to support three independent displays with resolutions up to 2560 x 1600. The Braswell parts should arrive as Pentium and Celeron J series products in order to properly distinguish them from existing Haswell and Bay Trail parts.
Source: Fudzilla
Image courtesy of Intel
