Geometry Shaders / OpenGL 3.2 Finally Comes To Intel Sandy Bridge

[carewolf]

False summary! I am using Sandy Bridge on Linux, and I am not ecstatic. Still don't know what I was missing.

[My8th]

Intel is always indirectly making improvements that make their way to unsupported hardware including hardware that isn't even from Intel, it's all good.

[przemoli]

My Fermi card supported OpenGL 4.5 within 30 minutes of announcement.

But thanks for your opinion though.

And Mesa supported first extension within few hours...

What that says?

That 4.5 is mostly NV extensions rebranded as ARB, or other older extensions without much modifications.

(That's good news. Maybe we will get 4.2 and then 4.5 in two steps )

[johnc]

What? you mean supporting their product by developing only on their side with proprietary drivers and proprietary opengl? With never coming with a real working optimus on linux, leaving nvidia costumer with only their intel card or battery drain with tearing? By not supporting mesa? By refusing releasing documentation for Nouveau developpers? I think NVidia don't know really what is supporting their devices. They made it work. Final.

My Fermi card supported OpenGL 4.5 within 30 minutes of announcement.

But thanks for your opinion though.

[gufide]

This is embarrassing for Intel, and they don't seem too committed to supporting their products for any more than, what, a year?

Sandy Bridge is hardly legacy hardware when you consider just how frequently Intel is putting out new CPUs.

I think I'll stick with a real graphics vendor like nvidia. At least they know how to support their products.

What? you mean supporting their product by developing only on their side with proprietary drivers and proprietary opengl? With never coming with a real working optimus on linux, leaving nvidia costumer with only their intel card or battery drain with tearing? By not supporting mesa? By refusing releasing documentation for Nouveau developpers? I think NVidia don't know really what is supporting their devices. They made it work. Final.

[axfelix]

I didn't think it was appallingly negligent by Intel in the first place as the HD 3000 does have very obvious compute limits. I keep planning on going out and getting a GTX 760 or something for the 2500k box I've been using for a couple of years but I still haven't quite seen the need as most of the games I've wanted to play over that time period are smaller / quirkier titles without a huge graphical load. This is a good development purely insofar as is nudges up the rough minimum that these games might target (as I've noticed that's sat around 3.1 lately) due to the prevalence of Intel/Mesa drivers these days.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but 3.3 isn't that hard to reach with 3.2 out of the way, is it?

[My8th]

Any linux games that support or will support geometry shaders? And what will the performance be like with it on Sandy Bridge GPUs?

[johnc]

This is embarrassing for Intel, and they don't seem too committed to supporting their products for any more than, what, a year?

Sandy Bridge is hardly legacy hardware when you consider just how frequently Intel is putting out new CPUs.

I think I'll stick with a real graphics vendor like nvidia. At least they know how to support their products.

[AJenbo]

Looks like Mac gets OpenGL 3.3 on sandy bridge.

[_SXX_]

This is great news and it's mean that Linux drivers for SNB going to be more advanced than Windows one except lack of GL_ARB_compatibility. E.g latest Windows drivers only support 3.1 core profile too.