The numbers are very impressive indeed. Intel claims the new Iris 5000 GPU will be 1.5 times fast as HD 4000 graphics used in high end Ivy Bridge parts. Better yet, the 5000 will fit the Ultrabook thermal envelope and it will appear in 15W parts. The Iris 5100 is reserved for 28W chips and it will deliver a twofold performance boost over the HD 4000.
In the 47W space, the Iris Pro 5200 should outpace the HD4000 by an even wider margin and it ends up 2.5 times faster in most scenarios. The Pro also features a bit of eDRAM integrated in the CPU package to boost performance.
With TDPs out of the equation, Iris could deliver a threefold performance gain over Ivy Bridge graphics. In the desktop space, the Iris Pro outruns the HD 4000 by a factor of 2.8-2.9. This basically means that Iris has even more potential when it’s not limited by mobile thermal envelopes.
All Iris variants support DirectX 11.1, OpenGL 4.0, 4Kx2K, OpenCL 1.2, and up to three independent displays.
However, Iris will debut in Haswell chips and it won’t come to low-end Pentiums and Celerons anytime soon. This means AMD should have no trouble maintaining its GPU performance edge in low-end and mid-range APUs.
