Intel Winning Over NVIDIA For Linux Enthusiasts

[tecknurd]

The way I see the graphs is Intel graphics are sold more than any stand-alone graphics card. Also there are not that many applications in Linux that require a high-end video card. Mainly, any Linux user can get by using a low-end video card. The CPU these days are very fast and multimedia programs are written with multi-threading in mind, so any hardware video decode acceleration that a video card has are useless. When movies comes in with 4000K resolutions, hardware video decode acceleration from graphics cards will be viable. Then eventually the CPU will catch up to be powerful enough to handle 4000K resolutions by it self. Though it seems most people in this forum are notebook users or nVidia users (like me) just do not care running or be part of the test. Really I do not want to be part of the test.

[tecknurd]

I've been trying to follow this because I'm looking for a new laptop (desktop replacement). Currently have 17" hp dv9000. I've used nvidia for years (blobs).

What should I look for in a laptop with Intel graphics that has:

good linux support
performance sufficient for desktop effects, perhaps the occasional game (I'm not a gamer).

I'm not a gamer, but want something future-proof for 4-5 years.

I have no problems using nVidia cards in Linux. Others have trouble with nVidia video cards in Linux. All I see on problems with nVidia cards in Linux is some distributions still use half-ass approach of handling the OpenGL libraries for close-source drivers. Also you have to hack the kernel options line to blacklist nouveu (open source community's lovely favorite ) when dealing with pre-compile distributions like Ubuntu and Linux Mint just to name a few. My recommendation after several years of using Linux is to use Gentoo or Arch Linux to ease usage and installing of the "blob" drivers. Calculate Linux gives you Gentoo in the same amount of time of installing a pre-compile distribution.

nVidia cards in Linux are future proof, but from what I read is notebook computers with nVidia cards includes Optimus. This creates a problem until you use BumbleBee. I have not tried it.

People here always bitching about something they do not understand. nVidia does support Linux. I have been and still using my GeForce8 8400M GS since 2007. It has been five years. For five years, I have dual monitor setup with this card. nVidia is easy to setup with multiple monitors compared to AMD graphics and Intel.

One problem with Linux is it is still is horrible with power management. I recommend just use Windows on your notebook or get a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro. Linux is still best used on a desktop or workstation.

From experience of using computers for most of my life, any special effects like desktop effects does slow down your computer and cause problems. Does not matter what graphics brand that you get. I use Xfce as my desktop management of choice with out any composite manager. I do not have any problems with nVidia graphics like crashing or freezing.

[Xake]

Me, I am partly colorblind and I LOVE these kinds of charts.....

[uid313]

The problem as I said before with your algo is that immediately you need to know how many colors you'll end up picking. but pts_Graph won't know that until later on and if doing real-time changes you may end up needing more colors after the fact. The current implementation is also using HSL.

Is there no way you could redesign parts of PTS to know ahead or something?

I am not a good programmer, but how else would it be possible to make this color any better?
It looks horrible now, and there is no way to improve it?

[GreatEmerald]

On a laptop with GMA X4500HD that I have, there are some problems with resolution (it's the non-standard laptop resolution, so it may be why), as it sometimes decides to not use the auto-detected values, and when I explicitly set it to use them again, KWin crashes. But other than that, it works fairly OK, and even has (an extremely small amount of) hardware acceleration.

[Gusar]

I have no idea what you guys are doing with Ironlake, I've never had any problems. No graphical glitches, Xv and VAAPI work great, no tearing. And I now also tried 1080p h264 video with vaapi.

Right now I'm typing this on a netbook woth GMA950. The performance of this thing sucks (can't even play Need for Speed 4 fluidly if all effects are turned on and set to max), but no glitches or tearing.

[jvillain]

It's just Intel, AMD, and Nvidia when it comes to GPUs and CPUs, right? Which Korean or Chinese company could you see entering the brawl?

First my premise. All Asian countries are going to see an explosion of computer use and we are talking about a lot of people. Over a billion in each of China and India. Indonesia is in around 250M, Pakistan 200M, Bangladesh 145M, PI 95M etc, etc. That is a LOT of expansion of compute coming down the pipe. These are mostly people just starting to move up the food chain. Keep in mind the average wage in China is still just $3000/yr. So two things they are not going to need off the bat are $500 graphics cards and $50 Windows licenses. The big winner in this space will be smaller devices like phones, pads and nettops etc. And that is where the ball will start rolling and where I expect competition to start.

But at the end of the day people still need to get work done. They won't be able to afford monster computers in the beginning. But as North Americans have learned, up grading you existing device can be a cost effective way to get more life out of you equipment. Between that and programs like China's to roll out computers to school children there will easily be room for other players.

As for who, like most things in the far east it will likely be a consortium of companies that kick things off using a government contract to under write the initial expense. The first thing you need is a company that can design and fab some chip sets and provide reference designs. The two that come to mind first are Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor but there are others. Then you combine them with a company like PC Partner and you are on your way. How much money is Samsung paying to license graphics power in it's phones, TVs etc. The economics on continuing to do that change as the market gets bigger. So the question is what are they missing? Engineers? No. Fab plants? No. Assembly? No. A market? Most certainly not. The only thing missing is a dysfunctional anti-competitive patent system. Which they really don't need.

Here is an article on PC Partner. http://computershopper.com/feature/i...n-100-pictures
There are also lots of web sites like alibaba or made-in-China that are good starting places to see what companies are up to already. http://www.made-in-china.com/Compute...phic-Card.html

[deanjo]

@deanjo

I highly doubt that you run your laptop with 24 fps that the missing 24000/1001 mode would change anything. It was known long before that you need ivb for that - or not?

Ivb still does not support it and when a majority of your media is encoded as such you do notice it. Not a huge deal, but noticeable never the less. I don't watch feature length video on the laptop but it does prevent me from using an intel based video solution for the HTPC's.

[Kano]

@deanjo

I highly doubt that you run your laptop with 24 fps that the missing 24000/1001 mode would change anything. It was known long before that you need ivb for that - or not?

[russofris]

Go ahead, Dr. Frankenstein!
*SCNR*
Sounds promising!

s/guy/GUI (blame the auto spell checker)

No promises. It looks like a number of people have already done just this. Ultimately, it's likely that I'll just put an "advanced" button on the bottom of the generic screen settings and do a Win95'esque advanced-DP-window.

Right now I'm interested in finding if someone has already done this, looking at how far they got, and then finding why it hasn't been implemented. There may be a perfectly good reason why we don't have this already.

F