Intel i915 Gallium3D Performance Examined

[dh04000]

this is so fucking stupid....


why does this guy keep running the exact same tests on some gay old quake3 games that no one plays?


you do realize that just running gtkperf would be a million times better for this set and give us much more info right?

That wouldn't prmote his testing suite, which he sells to game developers.

[Pallidus]

this is so fucking stupid....


why does this guy keep running the exact same tests on some gay old quake3 games that no one plays?


you do realize that just running gtkperf would be a million times better for this set and give us much more info right?

[Sonadow]

By that definition, gma500_gfx (Poulsbo) is unacceptable... which I suppose is a fair point. Although it's quite usable if you choose not to use composited desktops

That's because it really is unacceptable?

If i ever find myself with any machine which uses PowerVR graphics I can assure you Linux is not going to go on it, period. I rather slap Windows on it (I have a Microsoft subscription which I pay out of my own pocket so my licenses are free) and enjoy a better user experience.

In fact, my personal rule with netbooks is that Linux does not belong there unless there is a very good reason to do so, mainly because of battery life and heat. I know many people claim that they experience better battery uptime with Linux as opposed to Windows, but that is not what I am seeing in my personal machines.

For notebooks Im a-ok with Linux because they are not meant to last the entire day on a single charge of juice and I generally lug my charger around when I have to bring it out with me for the day.

[GreatEmerald]

At least it appears to be usable for running an OpenGL-accelerated, composited desktop which all that flashy effects like wobbly windows fluidly without slowdown or lag. I consider that to be the minimum level of performance acceptable for any driver.

By that definition, gma500_gfx (Poulsbo) is unacceptable... which I suppose is a fair point. Although it's quite usable if you choose not to use composited desktops

[ChrisXY]

I wonder if worse performance can be related to the more features (or even higher OpenGL version?) exposed. Game could use them and performance would decrease then.

Is there any easy way of disabling some feature to make OpenGL support the same between that 2 drivers?

http://www.mesa3d.org/envvars.html

MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE for OpenGL Version
MESA_EXTENSION_MAX_YEAR to limit advertised extensions by year they came out
MESA_EXTENSION_OVERRIDE can be used for adding or removing advertised extensions e.g. MESA_EXTENSION_OVERRIDE=-GL_ARB_get_program_binary glxinfo

[dev547]

Strange... In my gentoo tests on laptop with exactly the same configuration (old Acer Extensa 5210 with gma950, 2 gigs of RAM and cpu upgraded to T5600) gallium driver is from 10 to 30% faster, than classic.

[smitty3268]

Someone from intel (ian or eric, i think?) posted a couple patches that brought the classic driver up to GL2.1 and a similar feature set to the gallium driver.

It's really too bad that all the tests here were q3 based engines. I don't think that really tells us much of anything.

[Zajec]

I wonder if worse performance can be related to the more features (or even higher OpenGL version?) exposed. Game could use them and performance would decrease then.

Is there any easy way of disabling some feature to make OpenGL support the same between that 2 drivers?

[curaga]

Hi Michael

(don't you just love glossy screens - the first pic on the left)

[[Knuckles]]

"...is changing the default open-source Intel Linux graphics driver for old i915 through i945 IGPs (common to the first-generation Intel Atom netbooks)".

Isn't it common to all atom netbooks except those with PowerVR? e.g. even those with integrated igp on-package, it's still i945 IGP, right?

It's a pity that performance is so bad and even worse with the new driver. In the end, these benchmarks don't really show if normal desktop performance is better or worse, and that is the most important thing for these igps.