Intel And AMD Partner Up To Make Fast Integrated Graphics For PC Gaming

Both AMD and Intel are long time direct competitors when it comes to desktop CPUs, but the notebook space has been mainly Intel's game. When it comes to notebook GPUs however, Nvidia has been going unmatched for quite some time. So in what seems like an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" scenario, Intel and AMD announced an official partnership to bring fast integrated graphics solutions to laptops with Intel Core-i7 processors.

AMD is lending Radeon graphics technology and its use of HBM2 (high-bandwidth memory) for a custom video processor that complements Core i7 mobile CPUs. All three components are threaded together in a compact design called an EMIB--embedded multi-die interconnect bridge. It's essentially a connector that lets digital signals pass through a short distance at very high speeds.

A significant advantage of this technology is that it can fit into ultrathin notebooks due to the absence of a standalone video card and unprecedented graphical power for this particular form factor.

According to Digital Foundry, leaked specs include 1536 stream processors with 24 compute units and rough frequencies between 1GHz to 1.1GHz, which add up to 3.3 teraflops of graphical processing power. The specs would also put the Intel/AMD collab in the ballpark of an Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti. If the leaked specs are close to the final product, we could expect a competent 1080p experience in most modern games.

There's still many unknown details, but smooth gaming experiences on ultrathin laptops and Windows devices are likely to come out of the Intel/AMD partnership. Check out how AMD's latest video cards perform in our review of the RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56. Be sure to read our in-depth review of Intel's latest CPU in the Core i7-8700K processor as well.