When It Works, Intel Core i5 2500K Graphics On Linux Are Fast!

[stoatwblr]

Intel and Linux

At $orkplace (major UK university) we have had a LOT of problems with Intel desktop boards under linux - even thought they've been redhat certified (going back 5-6 years when our suppliers switched to using those boards) and my experience dealing with their devs has been "unsatisfactory" at best.

I suspect this ISV revelation explains the issue nicely. It looks like a culture change is needed at Intel.

[Kano]

As one Kanotix user got one of those cool i5-2500k cpus i wrote serveral scripts to compile ddx/mesa for it (and later for other oss driver too). I found a regression in the intel ddx for xserver 1.7 which was fixed directly AFTER the 2.14.903 tag. Now intel ddx git + mesa git can be used (together with latest kernel git). I also found the snb encode branch for snb and vainfo showed interesting results. So far the user is happy and can use vaapi and has a stable system. A K cpu is unlocked with p and z boards for the cpu speed and on h/z boards you could oc the gpu. Also the gpu has more power than the normal ones - but not sure if you see the difference in benchmarks yet. Be sure you use always the latest bios update with those new boards.

[Hey! Dojo]

Freezing/Lock ups

As far as the lock ups that Michael is describing, I can say that I have experienced exactly the same as him using an Asus P8H67-M LE and an Intel Core i5 2300 2.8GHz running the latest Fedora Beta. Needless to say it's going back but it seems to me that there is a problem with these Asus boards for Sandybridge when using Linux. Maybe the culprit is the UFI on these Asus boards - Which maybe doesn't follow the spec correctly - Hence why the kernel might have issue with it.

So I'm getting an Intel board instead (Thanks to Michael's articles about Sandybridge) having experienced the same issues. I suggest anyone else who wants to avoid freezing/lock ups to do the same.

Don't buy the Intel 6-series H67/P67 chipsets!

On mainboards with H67/P67 chipsets, devices connected to SATA Ports 2-5 may degrade over time.Devices connected to SATA ports 0 and 1 are not affected and can be used as normal. Only P67 and H67 Motherboards are potentially affected.

I'm disappointed in general with the quality of the phoronix coverage of sandy bridge and the lack of will (?) to add corrections (for example the missing info regarding differences between K and non K cpus). Seems that my comments have fallen on deaf ears at least :/

Maybe you can elaborate? I'm getting a K and the i5 2300 I tried was fast. Isn't the K something to do with virtualisation technology?

The hype on these IGPs is way over the top. One can almost feel the advertising money flowing.

I wouldn't agree that reporting on a constantly improving graphics stack for a brand new processor type with factual information is hype. Open source graphics drivers for on board graphics have never been good at all on Linux but with Sandybridge, that is starting to change. It's never going to be as capable as your propriety add in cards but that's obviously why information about Sandybridge is important to the people who are actually buying it.

[Kano]

Best give me a board + cpu and i will check it out. And of course i would test not only 3d games - when caster 3d run it would be fine, zero ballistics cool My main interest was always video accelleration.

[BlackStar]

Terrific performance on applications that don't require it in the first place. As soon as you bump to something moderately demanding like, say, Nexuiz, you fall to 3.57fps, which is downright terrible.

The hype on these IGPs is way over the top. One can almost feel the advertising money flowing.

[buzz]

I'm disappointed in general with the quality of the phoronix coverage of sandy bridge and the lack of will (?) to add corrections (for example the missing info regarding differences between K and non K cpus). Seems that my comments have fallen on deaf ears at least :/

[buzz]

I have the very same board - Asus P8H67-M pro (with i5-2500k).

I have had none of the problems you keep mentioning. It has been working well (with a few minor issues) since the day I bought it.

I would be interested to hear from this Intel person first hand regarding problems they had with this board. I currently remain unconvinced regarding the matter and status of affairs.

[7oby]

Your first Sandy Bridge CPU that you put on the ASUS P8H67-M PRO motherboard was an Engineering Sample CPU:

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?28280-Intel-Sandy-Bridge-Linux-Testing-Is-Coming-Real-Soon&p=165247#post165247

Was your second Core i5-2500K that came with the Intel BLKDH67BL a production quality one? If yes then those two cpus are slightly different (see link above) and one could try to switch CPUs. Maybe a production quality CPU works with the Asus P8H67-M Pro board.

[zoomblab]

If you are after Intel's new integrated graphics, not only do you need to be using a modern distribution for now, but also you need to be building your own driver (or obtaining the packages from a repository) so that you are on at least the Linux 2.6.37 kernel, Mesa 7.10, and xf86-video-intel 2.14.0.

Enduser linux driver update process FAIL

[V!NCENT]

Also I think the border background of this forum page is too bright. Might try darker grey because it's currently a big whitely white screen and hurts the eye.

I second this.

I also want to give some advise about the colars; use the FreeDesktop.org color scheme for desktops 'standard'. You know; those standard colors for apps.