Ubuntu 15.04 Brings Better Intel Performance For CS:GO & TF2

With the release of Ubuntu 15.04 coming this week I've been busy running some fresh comparison benchmarks between the "Vivd Vervet" and former versions of Ubuntu Linux. For Intel HD Graphics users, in this article are two quick results showing how the performance of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2 has improved on the open-source Intel Linux graphics driver over the past six months between Ubuntu 14.10 and 15.04.

A more thorough look at the Intel OpenGL graphics performance of Ubuntu 14.10 and 15.04 is coming quite soon (possibly even later today), but for anxious Steam on Linux gamers, here's how the performance improvement looks for the popular Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2 games... An Intel Core i7 4790K system with HD Graphics 4600 was used for benchmarking and clean installs of Ubuntu 14.10 and (the near final) Ubuntu 15.04 were done. Sadly with the Intel Mesa driver still lacking OpenGL 4.x support, the newer and more exciting games like BioShock Infinite and the Metro Redux games aren't yet compatible with the Intel driver -- besides the non-Iris Intel graphics would likely be too slow. In the later article looking at the evolution of Ubuntu 14.10 vs. 15.04 graphics will look at a variety of our usual (non-Steam) OpenGL test scenarios.
All of the benchmarking, as usual, was done through the open-source Phoronix Test Suite software.
The out-of-the-box performance is moving in the right direction and TF2 is playable on this Haswell HD Graphics 4600 system while CS:GO would be too slow at 1080p. Stay tuned for more Ubuntu 14.10 vs. 15.04 benchmarks coming shortly, including a look at the evolution of the open-source Radeon driver's performance over the past half-year.

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