Is Iris Xe any good? What can you expect from it, realistically? What for 3D strategy titles, especially?

I have been playing around with an Iris Xe-LP (80CU) variant, in an i5-1135G7. It's comparable, albeit a bit less well performing than a Vega 7/8. Overall I'm quite happy with it.

What are you looking to play, to be more exact?

I've tried Anno 1404 for a bit and it was a bit laggy while zoomed out (and dropped below 60fps @1080p maxed out), yet that was on Linux, where the graphics drivers still have quite the headroom for optimizations (I'm sure that's true even on Windows though). Anno 1701 is butter smooth.

P.S.: These days it's better to just look on Youtube for gameplay benchmarks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoevNcGmEPQ

Xe or Xe DG1?

Neither are great, but better than the last generation of Intel onboard graphics.

Nevermind, apparently the VRAM can make quite the difference. OP, are you asking about the dedicated card or the iGPUs?

For the dedicated card, see for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSseaknEv9Q

You're still much better off with a GT 1030. Or even better, get a cheap 1050ti or 1650 if you can find one and that will really expand your gaming horizon.

I was thinking about the integrated card for laptops. I did not know that there were different versions, thence the imprecision.. What I wonder is, these integrated graphics are enough to play modern strategy games reasonably well, as well as third person RPGs

Modern strategy, I'm not too sure about. Third person RPGs, you would be looking at low graphics detail (assuming they're modern RPGs). Personally, I wouldn't bother playing anything modern on a laptop unless it had a proper graphics solution (like a mobile RTX card). Anything more than 7 or 8 years old will probably play okay.

Youtube is probably your best bet to find out more on performance; I've not found that much benchmarking the mobile Xe chips.

Is this an eye implant?

Why improve graphics when you can just reduce the quality of the eyeball. Now there is a thought…

Do yourself a favor and get a laptop with at least GTX1050 if you want to play any more or less taxing game. Let me just tell one thing - windows laptop with Xe was utterly destroyed by a 5 years old laptop with 6th generation i7 and GTX960M 2Gb... running linux (wine + DXVK). Things might be different in other games but without a decent discrete video hitting even 720p with medium-high settings will be impossible in many games.

The XE entry level card is confirmed to be just the intergraded graphics chip of the high end Intel CPU's but in external form for desktops that require a video output option and don't really care about the power of a major dedicated GPU.

I find it fine for Emulators of old games Sega Genesis and those types of things. If you want to go a bit more stick with a 1050 or something in that ball field.

ETA Prime did a comparison with an AMD IGPU CPU combo and it wrecked the Intel XE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YobEdN3akfo

Thanks a lot for very informative contributions! I guess that the takeaway is that an Iris Xe might be better than older integrated graphics, but still way worse than even old dedicated graphic cards.

I remember playing Dominions in a 13.3" MacBook with dual boot with Windows. It could not even run Dominions properly (It might have been II or III). The mac was new and still got defeated by that game which just featured some effects, it was not even 3D in concept.

Probably something like that would not happen with an Iris Xe, but still, way to go before reaching what a dedicated card would do.

I am thinking of getting a laptop, primarily for travel and work, and some 3D capabilities might be nice to have. Then, I would like to play games with it now and then.

It is very tough to award the answer to a single person, with all the great contributions. Let WinterSnowfall get it, since they have provided a barrage of interesting posts. But let us not forget the other posts. If anyone arrives to this thread, I would suggest to read through all of it.

Thanks a lot for the help!!!

Don't mention it! I've upvoted the rest of the posts to balance things outs, as they were equally useful. As always, it's a pleasure to "talk hardware" with anyone on the forums.