Intel Gen11 "Ice Lake" iGPU Supports DisplayPort 1.4a and DSC Enabling 5K and 8K

[btarunr]

Intel processor integrated graphics will get its first major hardware update in 4 years since Gen 9.5 "Skylake," with the introduction of the Gen11 architecture that debuts with the company's "Ice lake" processors. The company confirmed in an XDC 2018 conference presentation that the iGPU will support DisplayPort 1.4a along with VESA DSC (display stream compression), enabling it to support display resolutions as high as 5K (5120 x 2880 pixels) with 120 Hz refresh-rate.

Without DSC, 5K-120 Hz requires 42.4 Gbps of bandwidth (not counting interconnect and protocol overheads), which even DisplayPort with HBR3 cannot provide, as it caps out at 32.4 Gbps. DSC offers "visually lossless" compression of the 5K-120 display stream down to roughly 14 Gbps, which can be comfortably handled by DisplayPort 1.4a. 8K (8192 x 4320 pixels) at 60 Hz also becomes possible. Merely supporting these new high resolutions doesn't imply Gen11 iGPUs can game at those resolutions. Support for them is necessitated by rapid increases in resolutions (pixel densities) and refresh-rates of high-end notebooks and ultra-portable devices.



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[gmn 17]

8K for me 8K for you

 

[hat]

I'm more interested in what its multimedia capabilities are. Game benchmarks would be interesting, but I'm not expecting much. Integrated graphics have come a long way from "well, they can kinda render the desktop" to being "almost useful". At least Vega 8/11 can (roughly) match a GT1030, which is okay, but still kinda meh.

 

[Mysteoa]

What about variable refresh rate?

 

[king of swag187]

I'm more interested in what its multimedia capabilities are. Game benchmarks would be interesting, but I'm not expecting much. Integrated graphics have come a long way from "well, they can kinda render the desktop" to being "almost useful". At least Vega 8/11 can (roughly) match a GT1030, which is okay, but still kinda meh.

For an APU, thats an amazing jump from Iris Pro/Radeon R7. In the real world? Terrible

 

[Prima.Vera]

How much delay and lag does DSC provide, anyone can confirm? Some tests done on internets are saying that depending on the scene detail, can go more than 100ms, which for fast paced games is overly slow and ridiculous.
Anyone can confirm that?

 

[king of swag187]

How much delay and lag does DSC provide, anyone can confirm? Some tests done on internets are saying that depending on the scene detail, can go more than 100ms, which for fast paced games is overly slow and ridiculous.
Anyone can confirm that?

Does it matter? You won't be gaming on it on 5K, or even 1080P unless something drastic changes. As for dGPU's, most of them support 8K through display port anyways, and its not like you'll have cheap 8K monitors by 2019

 

[dwade]

I got an orgasm thinking the possibility of having Arctic Sound as standard iGPUs. 1080p 60 FPS for the price of one CPU. I can see Apple dumping AMD Radeon completely.

 

[king of swag187]

I got an orgasm thinking the possibility of having Arctic Sound as standard iGPUs. 1080p 60 FPS for the price of one CPU. I can see Apple dumping AMD Radeon completely.

Even if possible, simply not enough space. Apple would dump AMD and their heatsinks entirely if possible

 

[GoldenX]

Apple has it's own GPU that they use with the Iphones, with them now being "Metal Only", I expect not-so-distant future Macs to only use their own GPUs.
Good, finally a new Intel IGP, I hope it gets a better driver than the older ones, at the very least as a testing ground for Arctic Sound. It would be great to see if they could somehow fight the APU R7 ones, but that seems unlikely.

 

[geon2k2]

Its nice for desktop, movie viewing and stuff, but for gaming there might be issues with the additional latency introduced by compression/decompression.
Even if it is 10 ms, that adds up, on top of the other gazillion ms lost here and there.

Not that anyone will game on an intel gpu in 5k, but maybe this tech will be enabled for lower resolutions also.
But I understand others will be forced to use the same tech for high resolution displays, which is not cool.

 

[R0H1T]

Apple has it's own GPU that they use with the Iphones, with them now being "Metal Only", I expect not-so-distant future Macs to only use their own GPUs.
Good, finally a new Intel IGP, I hope it gets a better driver than the older ones, at the very least as a testing ground for Arctic Sound. It would be great to see if they could somehow fight the APU R7 ones, but that seems unlikely.

That'll only happen if/when they transition Mac to ARM, otherwise it makes little sense to use Apple's (custom) GPU & not the CPU itself ~ which is in a league of it's own in the ULP segment.

 

[GoldenX]

That'll only happen if/when they transition Mac to ARM, otherwise it makes little sense to use Apple's (custom) GPU & not the CPU itself ~ which is in a league of it's own in the ULP segment.

They already said they expect to migrate to ARM in 2020.

 

[GreiverBlade]

5k .... 8k.... even more gimmick than 4k.... they should focus on getting 4k stable 100fps+ before thinking going higher (or solving their other issues ... since it's for a CPU's iGPU furthermore from Intel), furthermore for a iGPU being capable of doing 5k-8k outside anything than desktop and video play ... that's kinda pointless, except for media center ... although there are way cheaper alternative, granted mostly 4k, available around.

oh well ... my TV is 1080p 32", my monitor is 1620p 32" ... i don't even have (or need ) 4k anytime soon (maybe for the TV)

 

[Vayra86]

5k .... 8k.... even more gimmick than 4k.... they should focus on getting 4k stable 100fps+ before thinking going higher (or solving their other issues ... since it's for a CPU's iGPU furthermore from Intel), furthermore for a iGPU being capable of doing 5k-8k outside anything than desktop and video play ... that's kinda pointless, except for media center ... although there are way cheaper alternative, granted mostly 4k, available around.

oh well ... my TV is 1080p 32", my monitor is 1620p 32" ... i don't even have (or need ) 4k anytime soon (maybe for the TV)

This. Resolution is heavily overrated in most of its typical use cases; ie 6-7 inch phones and 4K TVs that are too small to even notice.

And even for a monitor situation 4K is hard to really make use of. Higher res is diminishing returns and exponentially increasing requirements. And then there is the content problem where most of it is just upscaled 1080p or worse.

 

[GreiverBlade]

This. Resolution is heavily overrated in most of its typical use cases; ie 6-7 inch phones and 4K TVs that are too small to even notice.

And even for a monitor situation 4K is hard to really make use of. Higher res is diminishing returns and exponentially increasing requirements. And then there is the content problem where most of it is just upscaled 1080p or worse.

my phone is exaggerated .... 5.3" in 1440p ... 720p would suffice (1080p for gimmick lover and bragger eventually ) 1080p above 6" till 24-27 1440/1620p for 27 till 32" (kinda where a PC monitor stop) and 4k for TV above 32" (if there is any readily available 4K content but that's rarely the case)

not even fully ready for 4K, already talking about 5k and 8k ... talk about some priorities ...

also my 32" 1620p goes fine in 1080p when i am using my Odroid C2 with Kodi ... that remind me that i should set up the GPU mod list for 1440p60 or 1620p60 since atm it's only going up to 1080p60

 

[hat]

Meh... even when doing bluray rips I resize to 720p. I wouldn't game at 1280x720 though, because that looks like crap on a 1920x1080 monitor.

 

[bonehead123]

SO.....

Intel can't even get their 10nm CPU process to work for shit (not to mention 7nm), but here they are apparently working on giving us iGPU's with updated capabilities which they should have had 4 years ago..... WTF ?

And yes I know making CPU's and iGPU's are 2 different (but similiar) processes, but still this seems their priorities are a bit out of whack here, unless I'm just missing something...

however, this statement "Merely supporting these new high resolutions doesn't imply Gen11 iGPUs can game at those resolutions" is very deceptive at best, downright stupendous at worst IMHO.....

 

[hat]

Deceptive? Most of us wouldn't game at all on an iGPU, let alone at resolutions of or exceeding 4k. We know their capabilities, but some readers may not, hence the statement. Also, Intel did a lot with iGPU since Sandy Bridge... and the iGPU is made with the same process as the rest of the chip. It's all on one die, so iGPU tech benefits from 10nm just as much as CPU will.

 

[Aquinus]

however, this statement "Merely supporting these new high resolutions doesn't imply Gen11 iGPUs can game at those resolutions" is very deceptive at best, downright stupendous at worst IMHO.....

Don't be so myopic. Some of us use computers professionally for doing things like writing software. I don't need a super powerful GPU to look at a terminal and a browser at high resolution. Not everyone who uses a 4k display or higher resolution just to play games.

 

[hat]

Don't be so myopic. Some of us use computers professionally for doing things like writing software. I don't need a super powerful GPU to look at a terminal and a browser at high resolution. Not everyone who uses a 4k display or higher resolution uses it to play games.

There's lots of applications that don't require huge performance. Multimedia is one of them. These iGPUs are great for that much, at least.

 

[Aquinus]

There's lots of applications that don't require huge performance. Multimedia is one of them. These iGPUs are great for that much, at least.

At work I use two 4k monitors attached to a Macbook Pro with an Intel iGPU (2015 MBP with Iris Pro) and it works fine for what I do.

 

[Easy Rhino]

At work I use two 4k monitors attached to a Macbook Pro with an Intel iGPU (2015 MBP with Iris Pro) and it works fine for what I do.

You havn't upgraded to those fancy 5K displays for Mac yet ?

Bah nevermind looks like you need at least the 2017 MBP to drive 2 5Ks.

 

[king of swag187]

You havn't upgraded to those fancy 5K displays for Mac yet ?

Bah nevermind looks like you need at least the 2017 MBP to drive 2 5Ks.

And the dGPU variant at that, so add in a extra $2K for a "Radeon Pro 555"

 

[Aquinus]

You havn't upgraded to those fancy 5K displays for Mac yet ?

Bah nevermind looks like you need at least the 2017 MBP to drive 2 5Ks.

I we do have some of those 5k LGs are work but, I would have needed to find an adapter, it would have still been running at 4k, and the reality is that 5k doesn't really look any different than 4k on a 27" display.

And the dGPU variant at that, so add in a extra $2K for a "Radeon Pro 555"

I'm pretty sure that iGPU variants of modern Macbook Pros will drive two 5k displays. I know they can at least drive 1x5k and 1x4k as I work with a co-worker who's currently doing that.