Past gens the AMD chips have had better onboard graphics, is this still the case or have Intel finally upped their integrated graphics game?
Edit: And I know about eGPUs and all that, but I do not want to carry one around with me. I know onboard graphics is never great, but I have my 4090 for home, when I’m away I just like playing some light games but Intel has always been really bad for it.
Still very much the case. AMD iGPs are still far better!
Unless something chnages a lot the amd igpus should be able to play more stuff before you start to want a egpu.
If we compare the intel 13th gen igpus to the 6000 (1 generation older than would be on the framework) gen amd igpus, the intel igpu in the i7 can sometimes keep up with the amd igpu in the r5 but the one in the r7 is a lot more powerful, I’d imagine the next gen ones would be even more powerfull. Especially since the amd platform gets much faster memory than the intel one and igpus love memory bandwidth.
I would not use a Framework 13 for any game more graphically demanding than, say, Rimworld. It’s really not what either the Framework, or the U-series APUs (which I assume is what will be used for the mainboard), were designed for. Even if it can run the graphics at an acceptable framerate, we have no idea what the fan noise will be under a gaming load (I tried Stellaris on my Tiger Lake model, and the fans ramped up to 100%). If you intend to game on your laptop, the 16 is the better choice (though we’re still waiting on specs).
For light gaming on the go I’d much rather deal with a bit of fan noise than with the bulk and the weight of a 16 inch but that is definitely a personal preference thing.
But anyway, amd currently has better peroformance per watt on both the cpu and igpu so you’d probably still get less fan noise with the amd frame for frame.
I don’t remember my intel 8th gen yoga getting all that loud playing stellaris and it was pretty playable so I’d expect a pretty good experience on a much more powerfull chip.