ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable Intel (14-16″) vs. Yoga Book 9i (14″ Intel) graphics card

[Jeffrey Greenberg]

was on cusp of buying Yoga Book 9i,

when a new dual-split screen choice just appeared:

ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable Intel (14-16″):

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkbook/thinkbook-plus/thinkbook-plus-gen-6-rollable-14-16-...

(new arrival, $1K higher price, but...)

Yoga Book 9i (14″ Intel):

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/yoga/yoga-2-in-1-series/yoga-book-9i-gen-10-14-inch-intel/len...

They have same graphics card?  Or is only one a 140V?

ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable Intel (14-16″)
Integrated Intel® Arc™ Graphics 140V

Yoga Book 9i (14″ Intel)

Intel® ARC™ Graphics

is one of these clearly better at handling current Photoshop AI Denoise

& other likely advances in next few years?  I shoot only photos, no 3D or video.

Thanks in advance.

[Conrad_C]

I’m not familiar with either model although just going by the specs, they should work OK, except that…they have Intel Arc graphics, and you want AI Denoise to run well. The problem is there have been known issues with Intel Arc graphics running AI Denoise, including but not limited to unexpectedly slow performance. I do not know how far they have been resolved. Hopefully there is someone reading this who is actually using Intel Arc graphics with current Adobe software who can report back that everything is OK now…?

Generally the best performing and most reliable PC desktop or laptop GPUs for Adobe Denoise and other GPU-accelerated features are Nvidia discrete graphics, the newer the better. (On Macs, the Apple GPU runs Denoise very reliably too, the more GPU cores the faster it runs.)

Intel themselves published this article last year, and it is still up there, so I do not know if this ever got fixed:

Low Performance Using Photoshop* AI Denoise Feature with Intel® Arc™ Graphics

[Jeffrey Greenberg]

> Hopefully there is someone reading this who is actually using Intel Arc graphics
> with current Adobe software who can report back that everything is OK now…?

=====
That would be so helpful if someone with first-hand knowledge did.
Thanks for response.

[ExUSA]

You don't want integrated graphics. And The Verge did a review of the rollable screen, you'd want to look at that before buying.

[Jeffrey Greenberg]

> You don't want integrated graphics.

OK.  But why?  Over at Lenovo I got this response:

"...the Yoga Book 9i features Intel ARC Graphics, while the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable Intel is equipped with Integrated Intel Arc Graphics 140V. The key difference here is the specific model of the Intel Arc graphics card. The 140V variant in the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable Intel is designed to offer enhanced performance, particularly in tasks that require higher graphical processing power.

Given your focus on photo editing with tools like Photoshop AI Denoise, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable Intel with the Intel Arc 140V graphics card would likely provide better performance and future-proofing for advanced photo editing tasks. The 140V model is optimized for handling more intensive graphical workloads, which can be beneficial for AI-driven features and other advancements in photo editing software."

[Conrad_C]

> You don't want integrated graphics.

OK.  But why?

By @Jeffrey Greenberg

Because historically and generally, integrated graphics do not perform as well as discrete graphics. Traditionally, integrated graphics hardware (especially by Intel) has suffered from lower processing power and much less memory available for graphics processing, compared to discrete graphics hardware. Integrated graphics is popular because it’s cheap and great for office work and light graphics, but it’s not the most powerful. Yet the latest Adobe AI and GPU-accelerated features place heavy demands on the GPU, so high GPU performance is more important now.

That’s why I already said earlier in this thread that on PCs, the most powerful laptop and desktop graphics processors for GPU acceleration and Adobe Denoise are Nvidia discrete graphics hardware. There’s no integrated graphics that can come close to the performance you will get out of the most powerful Nvidia discrete graphics cards.

Yes, recently, integrated graphics have gotten better. Intel Arc is a decent improvement, but only compared to earlier Intel integrated graphics which wasn’t very good so that’s not saying much. And as I said the graphics hardware on Apple Mac laptops, although technically integrated graphics, is quite competitive with PC discrete graphics. But still, neither beats the most powerful discrete graphics.

If you are literally asking for what you said in the original post…

…handling current Photoshop AI Denoise & other likely advances in next few years…

By @Jeffrey Greenberg

…the advice you will get from just about everybody is that if you want that level of GPU acceleration in a PC laptop, it should have discrete graphics hardware with enough graphics memory on it such as 8GB. Not weaker integrated graphics.

[ExUSA]

And just a quick added note.

Intel sells chipsets that control all standard computer functions, such as the CPU, graphics, networking, USB, video decoding, encryption, and so on. There is a long history of computers using add-on chips to add capability- math/floating point co-processor, encryption, graphics, video processing, faster I/O ports, networking, etc. These specialized extra chips do functions that CAN potentially be handled by the integrated chipset but faster and using far less power.

Of course these chips take up space and cost money. A manufacturer has a trade-off and entry-level models will usually get the bare minimum capability. Typically, gamers and graphics users need the higher-performance graphics chips. Apple goes their own way since they produce their own chipsets, which have higher performing graphics built in and don't use an external supplier like NVidia.