AMD Radeon 680M Graphics Are A Great Upgrade With RDNA2, Excellent On Linux

See more test results via this OpenBenchmarking.org result page from this round of testing.

Across all of the Linux gaming benchmarks that ran successfully on all three tested laptops/processors, above is the geometric mean of all the raw performance results. Going from the Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U on the HP Dev One to the Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U with the Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Gen 3 represented a 55% improvement overall! While on the CPU side the Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U on Linux had just modest gains due to being still based on Zen 3, for power efficiency and the switch to RDNA2 graphics is substantial. When it comes to power efficiency with being Zen 3 on TSMC 6nm FinFET and phasing out Vega graphics finally for RDNA2, Rembrandt is spectacular in these areas.

Aside from the huge generational improvement for the graphics, with the Linux gaming tests the Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U was 29% faster than the Alder Lake P Xe Graphics used by the Core i7 1280P. In addition, the RDNA2 graphics could handle running more games than the ADL-P graphics currently on Mesa 22.2-devel.

Lastly is a look at the CPU power consumption overall, which was limited to showing just the Radeon graphics due to the testing interruptions on the Core i7 1280P when hitting games that hung. On average the 6850U power consumption reported by the PowerCap sysfs interface was just 63% that of the 5850U. These results during Linux gaming jive with AMD's reported cTDP for the Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U at 15 to 28 Watts.

While moving from Cezanne to Rembrandt is tough to justify from the raw CPU perspective, the graphics performance -- especially when now having DDR5/LPDDDR5 system memory support -- can mean a hell of an upgrade with Vega being replaced by RDNA2. Under Linux this is a fantastic improvement for raw performance and power efficiency. Hopefully the Radeon 680M capabilities will lead to more laptop vendors choosing to make use of the integrated graphics. Beyond the great hardware, there is good at-launch open-source Linux driver support for Rembrandt (nee Yellow Carp on Linux) on modern Linux distributions to make for a nice well-rounded experience.

Stay tuned for continued benchmarks of AMD Rembrandt under Linux. If you enjoy these benchmarks please consider joining Phoronix Premium (or PayPal tips) to support the effort due to having had to buy the Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Gen3 and MSI ADL-P hardware for Linux testing due to the lack of vendor interest in Linux tests/reviews.