For a long time now, there have only been two games in town if you wanted discreet graphics
for your PC, AMD or NVIDIA, or one out for 3DFX. But that's changing as the first systems with
another discreet option are now in the market. I'm talking about Intel's new Iris Xe Max lineup.
That's right, that's how it's pronounced and that's right, the company most known for strapping
integrated graphics to their CPUs and calling it a day has now branched out to challenge not only
AMD in another industry segment, but now NVIDIA in a space they've long dominated.
But let's be clear, Xe Max is only a starting point for Team Blue, not a total game changer.
Instead of a beefy GPU that's meant to rival the RTX 3080 or the RX 6800 XT, Intel's first
discreet offering is a mobile GPU meant primarily for thin and light notebooks. But why? The answer
is that the chip is being marketed much more toward content creators than gamers.
Don't get me wrong, you can game on the Xe Max with more aplomb than you could with mobile iGPUs,
as Intel is touting frame rates between 30 and 45 frames per second in modern,
graphically intense titles at 1080p, albeit at low to medium settings.
You see, although the Xe Max is indeed a chip specifically made to be a GPU and not some kind
of CPU Intel repurposed, it has a rather small die which definitely puts a cap on how much it can
actually do for gamers. And unlike other solutions we've seen where an integrated GPU can work with
a discreet chip to render the same frame more quickly like what we saw with Radeon dual graphics,
Xe Max can't do this with the main CPU, which further limits its appeal as a gaming platform.
But things should be more interesting on the content creation side.
Xe Max supports machine learning to speed up rendering tasks, and although we just stated
that Xe Max can't team up with the iGPU to work on the same frame, the built-in AI can
delegate separate tasks to the integrated and discreet GPUs more effectively, which could be
helpful for editors trying to process multiple video clips at the same time, for example.
Obviously, this isn't as good as getting your work done on a desktop editing rig with dual-slot
GPUs, but it's not meant to be. One key benefit that Intel is heavily trying to get across to its
consumers is how its dynamic power sharing can more efficiently allocate power between the CPU,
the discreet GPU, and integrated graphics. Though exactly how much battery you'll save will
probably depend a lot on your workload. To be fair to Intel though, they are using low power
V RAM for additional battery savings, and early reviews indicate that Xe Max looks like a
significant step up in performance from a typical iGPU for content creators even if you just leave
the laptop plugged in. However, given the obvious limitations of the chip, it's probably not going
to blow you away, as those who need to do serious content creation on the road can always just bring
along a laptop with more powerful internals and plus an AC adapter, unless they're fighting
serious size and weight limitations. But this is still an important first step for Intel,
as it's set to release an actual gaming graphics card with modern features like ray tracing support
sometime in 2021. And with Intel saying that Xe Max rivals entry-level solutions from NVIDIA for
gaming and beats them in certain rendering tasks, it'll be interesting to see if they can hold
their own against existing high-end desktop parts, assuming of course people can even get
their hands on one without buying it from some eBay scalper. So thanks for watching guys, if you
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