Intel's dramatically ramping GPU clock speeds as Xe chip spotted at 1.65GHz

An Intel Xe integrated GPU has been spotted running at 1.65GHz GPU clock, and make no mistake that, if the shipping product can maintain speeds of that ilk, it would be a huge accomplishment for Intel's graphics chip development. 

Intel has been stuck at around the 1-1.2GHz max boost clock for its graphics chips since Skylake, and its mobile chips tend to fall at the lower end of the spectrum. However, an integrated GPU, built on the Intel Xe graphics architecture, appears to be breaking through previous clock speed barriers at pace.

The 1.65GHz chip has been spotted on the SiSoft Sandra database by serial leaker TUM_APISAK, the same leaker who found the Intel Tiger Lake Core i7 1185G7 chip running at 1.55GHz last week. 

The most recent leak is 100MHz faster and comes with a 28W TDP—although it is reportedly subject to a 26% overclock, which places the original clock speed at a little over 1,300MHz. 

It's possible this may be a next-gen analogue for the 28W Ice Lake processor, the Core i7 1065NG7, which is found exclusively in Apple MacBook products. Although without confirmation of the exact chip, this leak could possibly relate to Intel's low-power discrete desktop graphics card, DG1, or some unknown configuration—although that seems less likely at this time. The clock speed certainly matches what we'd expect from a desktop GPU.

The chip is equipped with 768 ALUs across 96 Execution Units (or Compute Units, as its designated in the SiSoft database), which broadly relates to both the top-end Tiger Lake iGPU and Intel's discrete DG1 card.

It's not surprising that Intel's managed to crank up the heat with Tiger Lake, however. The company's 10nm SuperFin process is a new optimisation of its existing 10nm process, and promises heaps of further optimisations to increase performance.

We won't have to wait long for at least some answers regarding Intel's next-gen, or for our first glimpse of Intel Xe, at least. Intel has a Tiger Lake announcement event set for tomorrow, September 2nd.

All of which is potentially great news for those of us hoping to game on the go—it's a good week to be a PC gamer.