Question Ryzen 6800u laptop: with or without discrete graphics?

[malavena]

Hello all.

I have two Lenovo Legion 5 laptops with RTX2060 graphics cards. They're mostly used by my kids and as desktop replacements because their battery life is poor. I've made sure they use the integrated graphics while on battery, but even then browsing time will not reach 3 hours.

So, I'm looking for a laptop for myself: lighter and really portable, that I can take to work. And I've come across the new Ryzen 6800u processors with a low power consumption and an integrated Radeon 680M graphics that -i've read- can manage most games at low resolutions.
There's an option of getting these processors with discrete graphics as well, mostly Nvidia. (I've been looking at the more recent Lenovo Yoga and Ideapads 7th gen).

But in this case I want to have a good battery life. And my questions are:

1. How much battery life can an idle discrete graphics processor drain?
2. Is there any comparison between equal models with and without dedicated graphics?
3. Are the integrated graphics (RX 680) good enough for casual gaming of CIV6, Humankind, Cities Skylines or Skyrim? Will I be frustrated if I pick that option?

Thanks for the answer.

 

[hotaru.hino]

1. Unless something's using the discrete GPU, it shuts off. The last four laptops I've had had a dGPU and they all comfortably got at least 7-8 hours of battery life.
2. Laptop lineups that have a model with and without a GPU are rare. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is one of Dell's higher end Inspiron lineups. And even then, finding a reviewer who did both versions is harder, because most of the time companies send one version of the laptop to them for review.
3. The 680M seems decent for 1080p medium settings in most games: https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-680M-GPU-Benchmarks-and-Specs.589860.0.html