Ubuntu 14.04: Intel's Haswell Linux Driver Comes Up Short Of Windows 8.1

The GiMark and TessMark test cases from GpuTest will work with the Intel Windows driver for Haswell hardware but not the Intel Linux driver, due to its trailing support for much of the OpenGL 4.x specifications.

With the other GpuTest 0.7.0 test cases, the Intel Haswell Linux graphics performance using the latest stable components varied from being 50~90% the performance of Windows 8.1 with Intel's official Windows driver.

While Intel's Linux driver is leading over Apple's Intel OS X driver for at least the MacBook Air with HD Graphics 5000, the same can't be said about the open-source driver's position against Windows. The Intel Linux graphics driver continues making significant milestones, but for these tests with the Core i7 4770K processor sporting HD Graphics 4600, many different OpenGL workloads were commonly in the range of 50~80% of Intel's Windows driver.

We'll see soon enough how the Intel Linux vs. Windows situation plays out with Broadwell, but if these results and our older Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge results are any indication, Intel Windows gamers will likely be living with a performance advantage for a while. Besides the greatest performance, Intel Windows customers also have more complete OpenGL 4 support, properly working and deployed OpenCL compute support, and other features not currently present with the open-source Linux stack.