AMD Radeon 880M iGPU 15% faster than last-gen 780M — Asus reveals Strix Point performance increase in 3DMark Time Spy

AMD's upcoming RDNA 3.5 iGPU engine will provide a 15% performance gain over RDNA 3, according to recent Asus product descriptions. Found by VideoCardz , new charts claim that the 880M integrated graphics inside the Ryzen AI 9 365 mobile APU score 15% higher than the 780M in Time Spy testing.

AMD has so far declined to share RDNA 3.5's exact performance boost over RDNA 3 when comparing the Radeon 880M vs the prior generation Radeon 780M. AMD did share at its Zen 5 Tech Day that the new Radeon 890M could outperform the 780M by 19% to 32%. Both iGPUs run at 15W, meaning the 890M beats the 780M at that level for the same energy, but it gets an unfair advantage: the 780M contains 12 compute units (CUs) while the 890M upgrades to 16 CUs.

Asus's latest product listing makes clear the performance boost from the 12 CU 780M to the 12 CU Radeon 880M. Seen below, the infographic shows the 880M beats the 780M by 15% in Time Spy benchmarks, with the mobile 40W RTX 3050 not far ahead at 138% of the 780M. Asus describes the iGPU as being suitable for "MOBA and FPS games" — in other words, good enough for esports titles with a chance at AAA games on 1080p low/medium.

Of course, both AMD's performance claims and the Asus numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, especially considering that we couldn't find VideoCardz's source for their Asus graphics. But these numbers would make sense in context. AMD's 16% IPC improvement in Zen 5 from Zen 4 is another major microarchitecture improvement coming soon that seemed unlikely, but that's coming as well.

AMD’s RDNA 3.5 engine powers the Radeon 890M and 880M integrated graphics, a refreshed and incremental improvement over the RDNA 3 engine. At Zen 5 Tech Day, CTO Mark Papermaster credited the company's partnership with Samsung for RDNA 3.5's improvements. AMD licensing RDNA IP to Samsung taught the company much about optimizing for low-power environments, and the changes made to RDNA 3.5 yielded a "double-digit performance gain" per unit of energy expended.

Changes include doubling the number of texture sample units to double the texture sampling rates, doubling pixel interpolation and comparison rates, and an optimized memory subsystem. And of course the 100 MHz faster clock in the 800M series and a switch to LPDDR5X memory from DDR5 in most Strix Point laptops will also come in handy in squeezing every extra frame out of the iGPUs.

Ryzen AI 300 'Strix Point' laptops with the Radeon 800M series inside will be on shelves by the end of the month. An exact date is not here yet but AMD looks to synthesize the mobile launch with its Granite Ridge release on July 31. Check back then for our independent reviews of AMD's newest slate of laptops to see if these improvement claims really come to pass.