Intel Integrated Graphics Outperforms Xbox Series S in Benchmark for the First Time

Experts at Digital Foundry discovered during testing that the Arc B390 graphics, under specific conditions, can deliver gaming performance comparable to the Xbox Series S console. The test was conducted on a Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5 laptop in Alan Wake 2, and for a fair comparison, the chip's power was limited to 30W.

As a result, the average frame rate was 29.54 FPS, which is about 7% higher than the Xbox Series S in the same scene. Without a frame rate cap and with V-Sync disabled, the result increased to 32.77 FPS, while raising the power limit to 45W did not provide a significant boost. Digital Foundry specialists note that a direct comparison of PC and console hardware is a difficult task, as the Xbox Series S not only uses FSR 2 but also employs additional optimizations that reduce vegetation and shadow quality, which are hard to precisely replicate on a PC.

When compared to the more powerful PlayStation 5 at similar settings, the gap is more substantial, but in favor of the console, which outperforms Intel's integrated graphics by roughly a factor of two. Separate tests conducted by other publications help roughly position the Arc B390 in the overall performance hierarchy. Intel's integrated graphics outperform once-popular discrete cards like the NVIDIA GTX 1060 and AMD RX 580, yet it falls short of the performance level of an RTX 2060 or RX 6600. However, in some ray-traced scenarios, it can demonstrate more stable performance than the RX 6600, thanks to the use of higher-capacity system memory.

The result in Alan Wake 2 is undoubtedly impressive for an integrated graphics solution and shows that modern processors can offer a gaming experience close to that of a baseline next-generation console, in a compact and power-efficient form factor. This opens interesting prospects for ultrabooks and portable gaming systems.

It's too early to draw far-reaching conclusions based on a single test, no matter how indicative. Key obstacles to the widespread adoption of Panther Lake in the gaming environment remain the platform's limited availability and its final price, especially compared to the affordable Xbox Series S. Nevertheless, progress is evident, and competition in the high-performance integrated graphics segment is clearly heating up.