AMD Renoir Graphics Beating Out Intel Icelake/Gen11 On Linux

Earlier this week I provided the first Linux benchmarks of the AMD Ryzen 7 4700U Zen 2 mobile processor on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and running within a Lenovo IdeaPad 5 (14). That initial article was focused on the CPU performance while for your viewing pleasure today are some preliminary benchmark numbers for the Vega 7 graphics up against Intel Gen11/Icelake.

The AMD Ryzen 7 4700U features Radeon Vega graphics with seven execution units, 448 unified shaders, and a burst frequency topping out at 1600MHz. While it's too bad Renoir didn't get Navi graphics, the Vega 7 graphics are quite capable in even competing with Intel Ice Lake / Gen11 as these benchmarks are about to show. The Radeon Vega graphics are enough for any desktop task as well as any intermediate workload, but for any die-hard gamer, you'll still be best off with a discrete GPU.

The Lenovo IdeaPad 5 (14) with Ryzen 7 4700U was compared against the Dell XPS 7390 with Intel Core i7 1065G7 Ice Lake processor. Both systems were tested while using Ubuntu 20.04 LTS with all stable release updates as well as upgrading against the Linux 5.7 Git kernel. As explained in the earlier article, the Renoir graphics aren't supported out-of-the-box on the default Linux 5.4 kernel shipped by Ubuntu 20.04 LTS but users must be on 5.6~5.7. So for this testing both laptops were benchmarked on Linux 5.7 Git while using Mesa 20.0 drivers. Worth noting is that on Mesa 20.0, the default Intel OpenGL driver is the modern Iris Gallium3D solution.

Benchmarks via the Phoronix Test Suite. Those wanting to compare their own Linux graphics performance to these Icelake and Renoir results can install the Phoronix Test Suite and run phoronix-test-suite benchmark 2005145-PTS-RENOIRGF57 for your own fully-automated, side-by-side benchmark comparison.