Intel has announced that its Iris and Iris Pro integrated graphics chips are powerful enough for most users and that casual and mainstream users actually do not need a dedicated graphics cards.

In a statement released by Intel, Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s desktop client platform, Gregory Bryant, stated that Intel's currently available integrated graphics chips are 30 times more faster and better than they were five years ago.

While we do agree that Intel has significantly improved its integrated graphics, we do not think that Iris and Iris Pro actually can outperform 80 percent of discrete graphics chips available today, as noted by Bryant. On the other hand, we do agree that most casual users and those not looking to game on higher resolution and ultra settings actually do not need a discrete graphics card.

Intel's integrated graphics chips in Skylake CPUs, like the Intel HD 530 can certainly hold its ground with 1152 GFLOPs of performance as well as support for DirectX 12, but only when compared to entry-level desktop APUs or mobile-class GPUs. Unfortunately, we do not agree that this represents 80 percent of the market and are still far away from mid-range desktop graphics cards.

Both Nvidia and AMD have pretty much given up on the entry-level discrete market and have mostly launched rebrands of earlier GPUs as users will rather go for a mid-range APU and get a whole package or stick to other integrated solution like Intel's IGP.

Intel has promised a lot and has done a lot to significantly improve its integrated graphics chips and the latest Intel Iris Pro 580 IGP, which should show up this quarter with Skull Canyon platform might end up even faster than some entry-level desktop GPUs or APUs.





Source: Wccftech.com.