It recently unveiled its GPU plans and diagrams at the San Francisco ISSCC. At the IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco late last week, Intel unveiled plans for a prototype discrete GPU. Designed to be built on Intel's 14nm process, the early test chip would feature 1.5 billion transistors and its clock speeds would range between 50 and 400MHz, reports Notebook Check (via PCWatch, Japan), indicating a leaning towards efficiency over raw performance.

Intel has made great progress in its integrated graphics chips over recent years. However, for any kind of modern 3D games, even its best efforts just scrape by - requiring lower detail settings, resolutions, and delivering lower fps than entry-level discrete GPUs can. On a portable platform it's easy to understand the thrifty power budgets Intel strains to keep within for its CPUs with integrated graphics.