Conclusion

With this article we are basically facing two different questions. First of all we wanted to find out what performance difference lies between Haswell and Richland regarding gaming performance. Second we wanted to find out if todays integrated graphics units are actually powerful enough to cope with recent games in either a low or a high preset.

First of all, let's have a look at the performance differences. We want to kick this off by mentioning the two results where we see by how much the results spread. Therefore relevant are 3DMark Cloud Gate, where Richland is about 25 percent slower than Haswell and Bioshock: Infinite where Richland is a very solid 47 percent quicker than Haswell. Other than that it is rather interesting to see, that performance differences are rather consistent no matter testing with our high or our low preset. In case of 1280 x 1024 pixel and low detail level we found Richland to be on average 19.61 percent quicker than Haswell and with 1920 x 1080 pixel the average performance advantage of Richland is 20.47 percent. In other words, no surprise the average difference taken from all results between Richland and HD 4600 is 20 percent.

After we've had a closer look at performance differences, we're now checking whether todays integrated graphics chips are any good for actual gaming or not. In case of our low preset (1280 x 1024 and low details) we see that all games we tested the AMD A10-6800K with can be played using that preset. When the framerates are somewhere between 20 to 25 percent you will experience stuttering from time to time, since minimum framerates will be as low as 10 to 15 frame per second. In case of Haswell the overall picture is about the same although there is a little less margin and there will be some more stuttering than with Richland. But basically games are playable at 1280 x 1024, but honestly, we wouldn't enjoy it with these framerates. If there is absolutely no other option, then we would run games under these circumstances.
As soon as we start looking at the results coming from our high preset, it becomes clear, that todays integrated graphics chips are not powerful enough to cope with this kind of load. The frame rates drop to 2 frames per second, which is by far not playable anymore.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 5 - Crysis 3 & Dirt Showdown
Page 2 - Test Setup	Page 6 - Metro Last Light & Sleeping Dogs
Page 3 - 3DMark & Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 7 - Performance Index
Page 4 - Battlefield 3 & Bioshock: Infinite	Page 8 - Conslusion