Intel Sandy Bridge Graphics Haven't Gotten Faster In Recent Years

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Sandy Bridge Graphics Haven't Gotten Faster In Recent Years

This weekend I pulled out a Core i5 powered HP EliteBook that served as Intel's Software Development Vehicle for Sandy Bridge. I hadn't touched this laptop in a long time but decided to see how the current Linux + Mesa graphics stack on Ubuntu 16.10 compares to the older Linux distributions when Sandy Bridge hardware was more relevant...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-SNB-SDV-2016-Tests

[Hi-Angel]

Does the Intel driver uses Gallium?

I am confused now because I see both that back in 2010 Intel thought of using gallium upon maturity, and that it is now in gallium subdir. But I recently saw someone said in a big discussion, that it doesn't use Gallium, and nobody protested.

[Michael]

Does the Intel driver uses Gallium?

I am confused now because I see both that back in 2010 Intel thought of using gallium upon maturity, and that it is now in gallium subdir. But I recently saw someone said in a big discussion, that it doesn't use Gallium, and nobody protested.

No, Intel's OpenGL driver doesn't use Gallium3D. The i965 Mesa driver is still a "classic" driver.

There is the "ILO" Gallium3D driver for Intel that was developed by LunarG as an experiment, but they haven't really done much work to it in many months. Not sure ILO even supports Skylake currently and still only supports GL3, etc. ILO was never the default Intel driver and basically is/was a code experiment.

[Hi-Angel]

Besides ilo I see though in the gallium subdir of Mesa the i915, so probably a number of Intel GPUs are using Gallium anyway.

[Michael]

Besides ilo I see though in the gallium subdir of Mesa the i915, so probably a number of Intel GPUs are using Gallium anyway.

That was done by like (Google?) for faster i945 performance.... Does anyone actually use any i915~i945 hardware these days?

[geearf]

Besides ilo I see though in the gallium subdir of Mesa the i915, so probably a number of Intel GPUs are using Gallium anyway.

I believe that's the same non-official driver Michael mentioned (look at the log for that folder).
No official Intel driver uses Gallium.

[wargames]

The reason the performance has not improved anything over the years is pretty obvious: they want to buy their new shit. And I would rather give up computers before buying their overpriced crap. Come on AMD, I'm waiting for ZEN!

[starshipeleven]

The reason the performance has not improved anything over the years is pretty obvious: Sandy Bridge graphics hardware itself was very meh to begin with, the first decent graphics hardware from Intel is the HD4000, in Ivy Bridge

fixed.

[Hi-Angel]

fixed.

And how does it explain the absence of performance improvement over the years?

[phoronix38]

Does anyone actually use any i915~i945 hardware these days?

I do and thank you so much for this benchmark. I have always hoped that my Intel HD 3000 could be faster but maybe it is the hardware and not the code that is the "bottle neck".