The Loser In Our Windows vs. Linux Tests: Intel Graphics

[Kano]

Intel win drivers are fast enough for simple games but a pro gamer would certainly never use it. In most cases those boxes are used for office use, there gameing is maybe inside the webbrowser with some flash games. It seems that flash 10.1 can use the driver for accelleration already, would be nice when linux flash would use vaapi, then this would work too there.

[m_gol]

I have an impression (but I wouldn't bet it's true for sure) that my 4500MHD got some boost with new Lucid (compared to Karmic).

[libv]

- A new Graphical memory manager

Apart from GEM mostly being an NIH of TTM, and its supposed simplicity soon became a lot less simple... What real issue was solved here that couldn't have been solved otherwise?

- A new 2D hardware acceration architecture

See above. and replace GEM with UXA and TTM with EXA.

- A new Direct Rendering Interface

This was an interface change, which didn't exactly provide any real benefit except for making the driver side much cleaner. I believe that there is still a noticable performance drop because of this. Also, this was done at redhat.

Again, what real benefit did this give users over "Getting real things done"?

- Kernel Modesetting over userspace modesetting

As the guy who came up with most of the base modesetting ideas of the last decade, i fail to see what major advantages every day users have from one side to the other. First and foremost, it's a cause of bugs and issues all over. If people had spent more time doing real things instead of reinventing stuff, we would all be better off today.

- 3D acceration with Gallium 3D

Hrm.

Pretty much every facet of the driver has changed.
From these changes you these benefits that you didn't have before:

-X Server no longer has to run as root

Which affects you, as a user, in which way directly?

-X Server can now handle compisiting with AIGLX(Accelerated Indirect Rendering)

-You can change displays and X servers without changing mode

Which affects you, as a user, in which way directly?

-Two different X server can now have hardware acceleration at the same time.

Which affects you, as a user, in which way directly?

-Run multiple 3D applications at the same time

Amazing, i can run multiple dri clients on the stagnated unichrome dri driver just fine.

-Hardware accelerated Video

Strange, i seem to remember intel xorg driver having Xv and XvMC support just fine half a decade ago too.

-Applications no longer overwrite each others graphic memory when directly rendering to the screen

??? Did they fix a bug?

The Intel Graphics driver stack has improve vastly since one year ago. Sure you lost some FPS when playing games, but the performance optimizations on the new architecture haven't come yet.

This depends on how one measures improvement. I see improvement in that people like jbarnes are trying to tighten up things and make them work in real life. But all in all, what you are listing is not improvement, it is just movement.

And all you list is things you caught from speeches and whatnot of how great things should have been in future. It is nice how michael did this benchmark and proved that maybe things aren't all that was professed.

[discord]

I'm interested in what came up for the Intel 945GM. I've been running Ubuntu on this laptop for a couple years, and the graphics used to be buggy and not work. I don't play games, but I do use dual monitors, watch movies, and have the 3d effects turned on. I've seen a definite improvement over the releases, I'd like to see a list of the improvements that were made over successive releases, and a comparison to Windows preformance

[discord]

On another look I noticed that you only looked at 1 intel chipset, how about the chipsets such as the 945 / 950 which have been around and worked on a bit in the last few years, how bout some benchmarks for that?

[krazy]

What graphics settings is nexuiz on for this benchmark?

[imamdxl]

My Intel 4500MHD can handle even relatively new games under Windows. Under Ubuntu, even OpenArena stutters. Come on, this game uses the Quake III Arena engine!

So these results don't surprise me at all.

I have Intel 4500M and I can play GTA San Andreas,NFS Most wanted, NFS Carbon, NFS Prostreet, Call of Duty Modern Warfare with WINE

[FunkyRider]

The problem is, not one cares gaming on Intel device. We have high expectation of AMD's hardware because we know, by design, they are capable of running leading edge games maxed out in effects. Intel, on the other hand, doesn't have this luxury from design, that's why out expectation for it is if it runs stable and video playback is fine, it's good. Bonus for running composite desktop. For AMD, that alone is not good enough.

So yes, intel does care about linux because their OSS driver still provides up to expectation function and performance and AMD is still far from it.

[FunkyRider]

It's like, comparing a retarded child with a smart child.

The retarded child can do simple math! that's very satisfactory result.

If a smart child can only do simple math, he is having a serious problem.

[FunkyRider]

Or a more appropriate comparsion:

Your three-year-old dog can understand sit, down, up, hand, that's a very smart dog, people will be happy about it. It also eat only $2 equivalent of food every day (energy consumption) Thinking that as Intel's GPU dog.

Your three-year-old son can only understand sit, down, up, hand, that's gonna cause serious panic among you and people who know you. It eats a lot, maybe $15 of food per day, and only does what a dog can do. Thinking that as AMD's GPU son.

Which one is better? The human is far smarter by design, however it can't do what it's supposed to do, it is troubled, dumb child. The dog is less smarter but it does perform up to expectation so it's a good dog.