AMD 8700G iGPU is pretty good

[igor_kavinski]

Unigine Superposition shows how much VRAM the iGPU is exposing to the 3D application/game.

I remember that i7-5775C showed 16GB VRAM on my system with 32GB. Don't remember if I set it that way in BIOS but I think I must have since I like to max things out.

 

[mikeymikec]

A small oc and 1440p.

Total clickbait thumbnail though. The more honest headline would be "it runs better than you might expect".

 

[Brainonska511]

I'm not understanding this discussion on manually setting reserved system RAM for iGPUs. Doesn't Windows (and other OSes) dynamically adjust the amount of RAM dedicated to the iGPU?

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Anyway, these new APUs seem nice if you wanted to have a mini-PC for simple HTPC use or just didn't want to have to buy a separate, dedicated card. Obviously, it would also come down to price.

 

[mmaenpaa]

I'm not understanding this discussion on manually setting reserved system RAM for iGPUs. Doesn't Windows (and other OSes) dynamically adjust the amount of RAM dedicated to the iGPU?

----

Anyway, these new APUs seem nice if you wanted to have a mini-PC for simple HTPC use or just didn't want to have to buy a separate, dedicated card. Obviously, it would also come down to price.

I just installed PC with 8600G (2*16GB, Expo 6000, 38-38-38-78) & boxed cooler. EDIT : OS is W11 Pro, Unigine shows W10.

GPU adrenalin setting for memory has "Productivity" selected as default. When I ran Unigine Superposititon, benchmark complained that GPU does not have anough memory (it "saw" only 512MB), but ran fine (1080P Medium).

I changed memory profile setting to "Gaming" and the benchmark "saw" 4GB and did not complain about it.

There was a small difference in this particular benchmark, gaming was ~4% faster.

Productivity (ie. default setting after installation)


Gaming

 

[Brainonska511]

I just installed PC with 8600G (2*16GB, Expo 6000, 38-38-38-78) & boxed cooler. EDIT : OS is W11 Pro, Unigine shows W10.

GPU adrenalin setting for memory has "Productivity" selected as default. When I ran Unigine Superposititon, benchmark complained that GPU does not have anough memory (it "saw" only 512MB), but ran fine (1080P Medium).

I changed memory profile setting to "Gaming" and the benchmark "saw" 4GB and did not complain about it.

There was a small difference in this particular benchmark, gaming was ~4% faster.

Productivity (ie. default setting after installation)
View attachment 94255

Gaming
View attachment 94256

So a marginal increase in score, but it could also just be reading out a configuration of whatever the baseline default VRAM is, and not showing any sort of dynamic changes allowed by Windows and the driver?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

@mmaenpaa

Thanks! That is precisely the info I was interested in.

 

[mikeymikec]

I'm not understanding this discussion on manually setting reserved system RAM for iGPUs. Doesn't Windows (and other OSes) dynamically adjust the amount of RAM dedicated to the iGPU?

I think you're referring to what is regarded as 'shared RAM' in Task Manager (which the system software can give or take away), whereas in the BIOS of most machines one can dedicate RAM to the iGPU (which the system software cannot give or take away from).

 

[Brainonska511]

I think you're referring to what is regarded as 'shared RAM' in Task Manager (which the system software can give or take away), whereas in the BIOS of most machines one can dedicate RAM to the iGPU (which the system software cannot give or take away from).

Yeah, I understand that aspect. Just not seeing why it would be such a major issue to set a specified dedicated amount a priori since at the end of the day, it's system RAM that can also be dynamically allocated.

 

[mikeymikec]

Yeah, I understand that aspect. Just not seeing why it would be such a major issue to set a specified dedicated amount a priori since at the end of the day, it's system RAM that can also be dynamically allocated.

To answer that question would require a bit of experimentation with an awkward amount of RAM - say 12GB - begin by dedicating 512MB to iGPU (because an amount always has to be allocated in my experience, probably for data security reasons) and running benchmarks with a game that is sufficiently VRAM-hungry (say 8GB max) to see the results.

Logically as you say, the system should allocate whatever amount of VRAM the iGPU wants via 'shared memory' (assuming it's not already allocated to processes) and it shouldn't matter performance-wise whether that figure is dedicated or shared, the performance difference should be negligible, but whether that's what happens in reality is the question.

Having said all of this, why is texture popping even a thing, assuming there's sufficient system RAM available? To my knowledge every modern graphics card can access 'shared memory' (I'll have to check what my RX 6700 XT says in this respect when I next boot into Windows), so why isn't this happening (albeit with a performance drop-off because texture data would have to be retried from system RAM)?

- edit - my RX 6700XT says it can access up to 15.6GB of shared memory (out of 32GB RAM), along with 12GB of dedicated GPU memory.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

To answer that question would require a bit of experimentation with an awkward amount of RAM - say 12GB - begin by dedicating 512MB to iGPU (because an amount always has to be allocated in my experience, probably for data security reasons) and running benchmarks with a game that is sufficiently VRAM-hungry (say 8GB max) to see the results.

Logically as you say, the system should allocate whatever amount of VRAM the iGPU wants via 'shared memory' (assuming it's not already allocated to processes) and it shouldn't matter performance-wise whether that figure is dedicated or shared, the performance difference should be negligible, but whether that's what happens in reality is the question.

Having said all of this, why is texture popping even a thing, assuming there's sufficient system RAM available? To my knowledge every modern graphics card can access 'shared memory' (I'll have to check what my RX 6700 XT says in this respect when I next boot into Windows), so why isn't this happening (albeit with a performance drop-off because texture data would have to be retried from system RAM)?

- edit - my RX 6700XT says it can access up to 15.6GB of shared memory (out of 32GB RAM), along with 12GB of dedicated GPU memory.

- Presumably the rendered frame is complete (sans a bunch of textures living in system memory) and rather than stall the entire workflow (and bring the framerate to a screeching halt) while waiting for the appropriate hi-res asset to be moved into VRAM and then rendered, the renderer decides to just output what its got and move on to the next frame.

Maybe its a function of deferred rendering or texture streaming or some other newfangled technique that older games or newer games without the proper implementation have that results in blurry images rather than a cratering framerate.

 

[moinmoin]

- Presumably the rendered frame is complete (sans a bunch of textures living in system memory) and rather than stall the entire workflow (and bring the framerate to a screeching halt) while waiting for the appropriate hi-res asset to be moved into VRAM and then rendered, the renderer decides to just output what its got and move on to the next frame.

But that's the thing with iGPUs and APUs with shared memory: There is no difference between system memory and VRAM, it's one and the same. If some textures are already loaded in memory but not as quickly accessible by the iGPU as other data in memory it's due to bad driver programming.

 

[yottabit]

But that's the thing with iGPUs and APUs with shared memory: There is no difference between system memory and VRAM, it's one and the same. If some textures are already loaded in memory but not as quickly accessible by the iGPU as other data in memory it's due to bad driver programming.

Right texture pop-in would generally be due to loading the assets asynchronously off the disk, or a poor engine implementation of LODs / mip mapping

The intent of those techniques is to minimize RAM and VRAM usage, and the pop-in is a side effect of poor implementations and/or hardware limitations

 

[BFG10K]

Ray tracing on integrated graphics, bois.

 

[QuickyDuck]

I'm not understanding this discussion on manually setting reserved system RAM for iGPUs. Doesn't Windows (and other OSes) dynamically adjust the amount of RAM dedicated to the iGPU?

GPU loves large continuous memory and the easiest way to do is simply reserve a block of RAM so the system wont mix it with other stuff, making it fragmented.

 

[igor_kavinski]

AMD Ryzen 7 8700GE 35W desktop Zen4/RDNA APU tested, 23% less GPU performance at half the power - VideoCardz.com

AMD Ryzen 7 8700GE tested The 35W version of the Phoenix desktop AMD processor. Ryzen 8700GE (engineering sample) & Ryzen 7 8700G, Source: GucksTV German tech reviewer GucksTV recently got their hands on an engineering sample of the Ryzen 7 8700GE. The 8700GE, priced at 299 USD (277 EUR), comes...

videocardz.com

If it doesn't suffer a performance hit more than 28% in any game, that's awesome power efficiency for an APU using only 42W max.

 

[DeathReborn]

Over 60fps 1080p, High, AA 2x, in Crysis (the original) It's certainly more impressive than any other IGP.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Ah man! I really hope AMD plans to release a 8700GX3D with V-cache. All this beautiful APU needs is some low latency LLC love! It would be a lot smoother, DDR5's higher latency should get ameliorated effectively and 780M would reach its full potential with gobs of available bandwidth.

 

[MrTeal]

Over 60fps 1080p, High, AA 2x, in Crysis (the original) It's certainly more impressive than any other IGP.

Finally, integrated graphics can play any game out thereᵗ.

ᵗMinimum 12 years later.

 

[mikeymikec]

Finally, integrated graphics can play any game out thereᵗ.

ᵗMinimum 12 years later.

Not much has changed there. Example: KOTOR1 (2003) hardly the pinnacle of 3D graphics for its time, I tried to set it up on my brother's new laptop in 2018 (Intel 8 series, iGPU) and it was still problematic. Maybe the length of time to wait is slowly coming down?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Finally, integrated graphics can play any game out thereᵗ.

ᵗMinimum 12 years later.

Humor aside: The combined user base for the 1650 and 1050ti is still massive. The 8700G is better than the 1050ti and keeps up with the 1650. The APU has the added advantages of effectively having more VRAM. Which in the vast majority of games means using higher textures. Usually the single best visual improvement, and without significant performance penalty. It also has a better media engine and ray tracing support.

Cristo has the 8600G against popular budget dGPUs and it does great at stock with 6000MTs. Polaris can't even run Alan Walks 2 so it's infinitely better in that game.

 

[igor_kavinski]

KOTOR1 (2003) hardly the pinnacle of 3D graphics for its time, I tried to set it up on my brother's new laptop in 2018 (Intel 8 series, iGPU) and it was still problematic.

Windows API + DirectX sucks. Game developers are too reliant on undocumented "tricks" or workarounds and these break compatibility with future versions of Windows. This is one reason why I love emulators. It's emulating the original hardware almost perfectly so 95% chance that the game will run flawlessly. And you can even use additional visual effects on top if your physical hardware is now 30 to 50 times faster than the emulated hardware.

 

[mikeymikec]

Windows API + DirectX sucks. Game developers are too reliant on undocumented "tricks" or workarounds and these break compatibility with future versions of Windows. This is one reason why I love emulators. It's emulating the original hardware almost perfectly so 95% chance that the game will run flawlessly. And you can even use additional visual effects on top if your physical hardware is now 30 to 50 times faster than the emulated hardware.

Admittedly my use of the word "problematic" was vague (problematic? ). I mainly meant that FPS was still pretty poor, but it was also problematic because vendor-specific features had to be disabled otherwise the game would crash in short order.

Maybe I'm being overly harsh about the game's 3D relative to its time; I remember my GeForce 7600GS being pushed by the sand dunes on Tattooine years later.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Not much has changed there. Example: KOTOR1 (2003) hardly the pinnacle of 3D graphics for its time, I tried to set it up on my brother's new laptop in 2018 (Intel 8 series, iGPU) and it was still problematic. Maybe the length of time to wait is slowly coming down?

That's a terrible example. UHD has always been laughable for gaming. And quite a lot has changed. Here's an example of how bad UHD is. My i3 10100 UHD 630 had performance issues with The Force Unleashed 1&2 including some rendering glitches. My 6yr old Ryzen Pro 2400G in my ASRock Deskmini handles old games like that perfectly without breaking a sweat. With holo.iso it makes great little Steam machine. With 11 pro is can play almost my entire GOG library great. And a lot of my Epic, Ubisoft, and Steam libraries enjoyably.

Yet the 780M and 760M merk the best and newest Vega IGPs. Have a superior CPU, the only live platform, and a better, more modern feature set for media and gaming. APUs have come a long way, and the improvements will be coming faster than ever. APUs are at a great inflection point thanks to the booming handheld and mini PC markets.

Meteor Lake ARC is great progress for Intel IGP, and will improve with age like dGPU ARC. B series should be a good performance uplift on top of it.

 

[igor_kavinski]

vendor-specific features had to be disabled otherwise the game would crash in short order.

Microsoft should not allow this. What's the point of creating DirectX and then letting the only two vendors (mainly nHideous) shred it to pieces with their hardware specific features?

At the very least, force them to bake in a mode that is perfectly hardware agnostic so that any future DirectX compatible card will play that game flawlessly. Microsoft's handling of 3D on PCs has been extremely dumb and the current mess of fragmentation in raytracing and upscaling technologies is further proof of that. Get the vendors together in a room, get them to agree on doing things in a standardized way, at least for a baseline DirectX compatibility mode and let them add their own specific hardware modes on top of that in their sponsored games if they want. Indie developers and smaller studios can just target the compatibility mode to save time.

 

[mikeymikec]

That's a terrible example. UHD has always been laughable for gaming. And quite a lot has changed. Here's an example of how bad UHD is. My i3 10100 UHD 630 had performance issues with The Force Unleashed 1&2 including some rendering glitches. My 6yr old Ryzen Pro 2400G in my ASRock Deskmini handles old games like that perfectly without breaking a sweat. With holo.iso it makes great little Steam machine. With 11 pro is can play almost my entire GOG library great. And a lot of my Epic, Ubisoft, and Steam libraries enjoyably.

Yet the 780M and 760M merk the best and newest Vega IGPs. Have a superior CPU, the only live platform, and a better, more modern feature set for media and gaming. APUs have come a long way, and the improvements will be coming faster than ever. APUs are at a great inflection point thanks to the booming handheld and mini PC markets.

Meteor Lake ARC is great progress for Intel IGP, and will improve with age like dGPU ARC. B series should be a good performance uplift on top of it.

I would respond but I think I'll only end up hurting someone's feelings about iGPUs and gaming

<reminds self that iGPUs have a valid place in the line-up, other peoples' standards/budgets are their own business and none of mine>