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Present & Future of Intel Driver

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  • #11
    Thanks once again to you all for your input ^^

    Ok, so 720p will be fine (as I assumed) and there is plans for GPU assisted decoding in the future via Gallium3D. That's 2 ticks.

    How is performance with composited desktops such as compiz? I've not really had the chance to ever sit down and tinker with compiz, so I'm not sure if it's something I'd use on a daily basis, but it'd be nice to know that the option is there and that the 4500MHD would have the "oomph" to run it all without any slowdown. I know there's been a lot of work with DRI2 as well. Is that complete to the point where you can run an OpenGL window on a composited desktop?

    As for gaming, I know not expect much from the Intel hardware. I've found them barely able to run WoW on the lowest settings under Windows ^^ As I already said, I have a desktop PC with a huge screen and a GTX285 for that side of things, but it would be nice to be able to play a few games on the go. I'm not talking FPS's or the like, but maybe something like the Sam & Max episodic games via WINE.

    Sorry if anything I've asked has already been answered, I just want to be 110% sure that what I buy will do what I want. It's not like you can upgrade a laptop much =)

    All the best.

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    • #12
      If you have got a few bucks left, buy a desktop system with Intel onboard video, maybe you have got a already a S775 cpu then only a board is needed. Most easy way to test speed then, that better than tests from others.

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      • #13
        Originally posted by Nexx View Post
        How is performance with composited desktops such as compiz? I've not really had the chance to ever sit down and tinker with compiz, so I'm not sure if it's something I'd use on a daily basis, but it'd be nice to know that the option is there and that the 4500MHD would have the "oomph" to run it all without any slowdown. I know there's been a lot of work with DRI2 as well. Is that complete to the point where you can run an OpenGL window on a composited desktop?
        Not sure how well it translates, but I have an X4500HD and I haven't seen any problems with Compiz whenever I have tried it. I mostly use the compositor in Metacity. It's of the render, 2D based, variety.

        DRI2 and OpenGL in a composited environment works very well. One of the last missing pieces was sync to vblank in DRI2, it has recently been fixed, but I think it will require Xserver 1.7?

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        • #14
          I'm new at these forums, so I'll first say hi!

          As a reaction to the topic starter;

          I didn't read all of the reactions, so I might be saying something that has been said before. However ..

          Nvidia's proprioritary are pretty good, but atm you have some options. As people have been putting lots of work into oss drivers for intel/ati/nvidia, there are some things to be mentioned.

          As a starter, I'm running compiz with all features running smoothly on a _i915_. I have to say though that I compile the entire X stack from git.

          Lots of work has been going into the ati driver (by Dave Airlie, praise him) which actually makes the oss ati driver much better than the proprioritary driver (really).

          For nvidia, you can try out the (bleeding edge) Mesa Gallium Nvidia stack, which is by now (I've tried) running much smoother that the official NVidia drivers.

          So, in my opinion, saying that an NVidia is the best option, just is plainly wrong. It would have been half a year ago, but right now, you have tho option to choose. Do some googling and the http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/Mailinglists is good starter.

          Cheers,
          Jan

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          • #15
            Originally posted by jteb View Post
            I'm new at these forums, so I'll first say hi!

            So, in my opinion, saying that an NVidia is the best option, just is plainly wrong. It would have been half a year ago, but right now, you have tho option to choose. Do some googling and the http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/Mailinglists is good starter.

            Cheers,
            Jan

            I have a 965 chip in my thinkpad along with t9300 core2. It's great that an old Pentium 3 can play 720p, but under Kubuntu 8.10, I couldn't. The out of the box experience under Kubuntu 9.04 hasn't been great when compared to what Nvidia offers, or compared to what Intel's chips do in Windows and OS X.

            Right now, if you want decent performance with Intel, you have to do some work to get it, and then you'll likely run into some bugs.

            It's improving, but I think we're six months away or so from a good, hassle free experience with Intel graphics.

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            • #16
              Originally posted by kxmas View Post
              I have a 965 chip in my thinkpad along with t9300 core2. It's great that an old Pentium 3 can play 720p, but under Kubuntu 8.10, I couldn't. The out of the box experience under Kubuntu 9.04 hasn't been great when compared to what Nvidia offers, or compared to what Intel's chips do in Windows and OS X.

              Right now, if you want decent performance with Intel, you have to do some work to get it, and then you'll likely run into some bugs.

              It's improving, but I think we're six months away or so from a good, hassle free experience with Intel graphics.
              Well, after extensive shopping around I've come to the conclusion that the EU laptop market seems to prefer ATi over nvidia ^u^ Low-end ATi cards are far more common place in "budget" range laptops, at least I'm yet to find a decent 15.4" laptop with nvidia GFX for ?400-450.

              As it turns out, the motherboard in one of my machines here is G45 based and has the X4500HD. I'd forgotten about it because at some point in the past, for a reason I can't remember, I put an nvidia card in it. I'm thinking about grabbing the latest Ubuntu live-CD and giving it a go to see what the experience is like (it's shamefully running Windows at the moment >.<).

              Truth be told, as I said above, my budget is more likely to make the decision for me. The idea was to have a mobile PC as a nice addition without breaking the bank, not to spend way over the odds on something just to get an nvidia GFX card.

              It really is a shame that Dell don't seem to want to release the Studio 14z over here in Europe. I'd order one tomorrow if they did, despite the RAM thing.

              Anyway, thanks again to everyone who took the time to reply. I'll report back when I've had a chance to play with Ubuntu and the X4500HD.

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              • #17
                Btw. there is one thing that you might want to consider. If you want to try HyperSpace Hybrid, then Intel onboard + VT enabled CPU would be needed. I would like to test that too, but the stupid installer checks for laptop (most likely it tests for a battery) - and i do not have got a laptop.

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                • #18
                  With my [email protected] and G33 (and kernel 2.6.29), I can play The Matrix@1080p perfectly smoothly with VLC, without using complex instructions in a console (which were mandatory up to now, and I could only use mplayer that way...so I could not pause a video, only abort it).
                  I can also now play Torcs smoothly at 1280*1024 on some circuits that were unplayable until now. A year ago no circuit was playable even at 800*600.
                  Intel and Xorg programmers (and the VLC ones too) are really doing a fine job!

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                  • #19
                    Originally posted by DebianAroundParis View Post
                    ...I could not pause a video, only abort it).

                    Begging pardon for the OT, but what does this comment actually mean? Does your distro disable all the mplayer hotkeys? (space = (un)pause; f = (un)fullscreen; etc...)

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                    • #20
                      Originally posted by Wyatt View Post

                      Begging pardon for the OT, but what does this comment actually mean? Does your distro disable all the mplayer hotkeys? (space = (un)pause; f = (un)fullscreen; etc...)
                      I chose a long time ago not to learn the hotkeys of any software. So I had no idea I could use some with mplayer launched from the console.

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