Intel’s Iris Xe Max brings graphics chops to thin-and-light laptops

Intel claimed recently that its new Iris Xe Max graphics can outperform Nvidia’s GeForce MX350 in gaming, and even top a GeForce RTX 2080 in some encoding tasks. How it does that—through power sharing, and an Intel technology called Deep Link—could make the package of an 11th-gen Core Tiger Lake CPU and an Iris Xe Max GPU a spec to look for in future laptops.

Code-named DG1, Intel’s first discrete GPU since 1998’s Intel i740 will appear in mainstream thin-and-light PCs like the Acer Swift 3x, Asus VivoBook Flip TP470, and Dell Inspiron 15 7000 2-in-1. The Iris Xe Max faces off against Nvidia’s GeForce MX350 and MX450, both discrete mobile GPUs that split the difference between a gaming-class mobile GPU and the integrated graphics included in mobile Ryzen and Core processors.