Intel Graphics Performance: Ubuntu 17.04 vs. 17.10

Given the Ubuntu 17.10 release this week and its massive desktop changes from GNOME Wayland to Mesa/kernel upgrades, we've been busy benchmarking this new Ubuntu OS release. Complementing the Radeon Ubuntu 17.04 vs. 17.10 gaming comparison are now some OpenGL/Vulkan benchmarks when using Intel Kabylake graphics hardware on Ubuntu 17.04, 17.10 with X.Org and Wayland, and the performance if upgrading against Linux/Mesa Git.

The Intel HD Graphics 630 comparison for this article included:

- Ubuntu 17.04 with its stock Linux 4.10 and Mesa 17.0.7 environment atop Unity 7 with the X.Org session.

- Ubuntu 17.10 out-of-the-box with the GNOME Shell session on Wayland with the Linux 4.13 kernel and Mesa 17.2.2.

- The same Ubuntu 17.10 software stack but switching to the GNOME Shell X.Org session via the GDM log-in manager.

- Ubuntu 17.10 on Wayland when upgrading against Linux 4.14 Git and Mesa 17.3-dev. The Mesa Git packages were obtained from the Padoka PPA that now supports 17.10/Artful.

All of the tests were done with the same Intel Core i7 7700K system.

All of these OpenGL and Vulkan Linux gaming benchmarks of Intel graphics on Ubuntu were carried out in a fully-automated and reproducible manner using the open-source Phoronix Test Suite benchmarking software.