Present & Future of Intel Driver [Archive]

Nexx

06-02-2009, 06:20 PM

Hello all,

I've been contemplating the idea of purchasing a laptop since Christmas, mainly for use around the house (to free me from my desk), but also for the odd occasion where I'm out and about.

Now, cost is a factor and anything with a discrete GPU is unnervingly expensive. So I've been looking at getting a "budget" laptop with a GMA 4500MHD.

It's been a while since I tinkered about with Intel GFX hardware under Linux and I'm having a little trouble finding reliable information on just how things are at present, and where things are headed.

The laptop would be used for "everyday" work such as e-mail, web browsing and so on. I have no intention on running graphically intensive 3D games on it; maybe the odd "oldie" 3D game via WINE now and then. I have a PC for those graphically intensive "next-gen" games.

So I guess it'd be best to put all this in the form of a couple of questions =P

1) How is performance with the Intel driver these days? I'm thinking of maybe using a composited desktop, can the 4500MHD handle that without massive slowdowns?

2) How well does the 4500MHD power-save under Linux? Battery life isn't the most important thing, but a couple of hours would be great.

3) Is there any plans to expose the HD decoding engine of the 4500MHD under Linux? I know it's available under Windows, but who wants to use that? ^u^

Any other thoughts would be appreciated!

Kano

06-02-2009, 07:29 PM

nvidia is the best driver for wine. I don't think that will change in the near future. Also vdpau is available for nvidia now and what intel supports in the future is not known.

kxmas

06-02-2009, 08:17 PM

nvidia is the best driver for wine. I don't think that will change in the near future. Also vdpau is available for nvidia now and what intel supports in the future is not known.

Unless you're an opensource zealot, save yourself some grief and spend some money on NVidia.

I can't say that Intel hasn't put forth a good effort. I appreciate how open their drivers are. I would choose them over ATI.

crumja

06-03-2009, 12:51 AM

I can't believe how biased people are in favour of nvidia. I've had nothing but bad experiences with them. Older cards are deprecated and support for them is slowed to a crawl at random times. Support for the latest kernel and xserver is also up to their release schedule. 2D is slow compared to OSS drivers for other cards. If you don't want things to become horribly unusable, stay away fron nvidia.

Intel is my #1 choice for mobile computers. Suspend/resume works very well. 2D is screamingly fast. 3D works for all the older games I play on wine and natively. UT2004 runs 1280x800 at 20 fps. NWN runs without lag. Warcraft 3 does 1440x900 at 28 fps. Compoiste works without lag as well. This is with an X3100 card. Yours would undoubtedly perform better.

There's no need for dedicated power saving hardware support because the power use on integrated chips is so low. My nonscientific measurements say that Intel uses less power on load than discrete cards do on idle (when taking out the CPU power consumption).

The decode engine will be exposed when Gallium3D is integrated into mesa. See: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzE0Mg

For desktops where power consumption is not an issue, ATI cards are the only way I go. The OSS support for everything <= R500 is superb except for GLSL support. That will change with the rewrite work going on. Games run fine. Videos play well. Suspend/resume works. The latest kernel bits are supported. Best of all, things will only improve in the future.

Wyatt

06-03-2009, 02:51 AM

I've had pretty good experiences with Intel GPUs in the past year or two, only problems came when I briefly tried some of the experimental git branches.

Considering the type of usage you describe, that GPU will be more than adequate.

Kano

06-03-2009, 02:54 AM

And where do you see something similar than vdpau for intel/ati on the horizon? He wanted that too...

Nexx

06-03-2009, 06:11 AM

Thank you all for your input so far.

I must admit that my gaming PC recently went from an ATi card to an nvidia one because of the better features and performance under Linux, but I'm in no way an nvidia fanboy. I like what works best for my needs, whomever makes it.

Originally I'd hoped Dell would release the Studio 14z over here in the UK as it was cheap and used the GeForce 9400M G, but there's been no announcement and they made a bit of a daft design decision (soldering 1GB of RAM directly to the motherboard). So it looks like that's out the window.

As for HD acceleration, it'd be nice but isn't essential. The highest definition thing I have is 720p and I'm fairly sure a decent Core 2 Duo can decode that in software.

If anyone else has any advice, please feel free to chip in, oh, and if anyone does know of a "budget" range laptop which is available in the UK and has an nvidia GFX card, I'd appreciate that too ^^

Thanks again

Kano

06-03-2009, 06:25 AM

720p software only is no problem usually, thats correct. Laptop cpus just have got lower clockspeeds, but budget desktop cpus are already able to play 1080p for less than 70 euro (like Pentium E6300). Intel onboard is definitely not a bad choice when you have got another pc for gaming. Compiz runs on it too, but please never buy it for games.

szczerb

06-03-2009, 08:05 AM

I've got a Pentium Dual Core 1.73GHz and it decodes 720p without a hassle.

Wyatt

06-03-2009, 11:34 AM

For that matter, even my old 2 GHz Dothan can manage 720p h.264/AC3 with pretty decent success.

Nexx

06-03-2009, 12:09 PM

Thanks once again to you all for your input ^^

Ok, so 720p will be fine (as I assumed) and there is plans for GPU assisted decoding in the future via Gallium3D. That's 2 ticks.

How is performance with composited desktops such as compiz? I've not really had the chance to ever sit down and tinker with compiz, so I'm not sure if it's something I'd use on a daily basis, but it'd be nice to know that the option is there and that the 4500MHD would have the "oomph" to run it all without any slowdown. I know there's been a lot of work with DRI2 as well. Is that complete to the point where you can run an OpenGL window on a composited desktop?

As for gaming, I know not expect much from the Intel hardware. I've found them barely able to run WoW on the lowest settings under Windows ^^ As I already said, I have a desktop PC with a huge screen and a GTX285 for that side of things, but it would be nice to be able to play a few games on the go. I'm not talking FPS's or the like, but maybe something like the Sam & Max episodic games via WINE.

Sorry if anything I've asked has already been answered, I just want to be 110% sure that what I buy will do what I want. It's not like you can upgrade a laptop much =)

All the best.

Kano

06-03-2009, 12:33 PM

If you have got a few bucks left, buy a desktop system with Intel onboard video, maybe you have got a already a S775 cpu then only a board is needed. Most easy way to test speed then, that better than tests from others.

whizse

06-03-2009, 02:55 PM

How is performance with composited desktops such as compiz? I've not really had the chance to ever sit down and tinker with compiz, so I'm not sure if it's something I'd use on a daily basis, but it'd be nice to know that the option is there and that the 4500MHD would have the "oomph" to run it all without any slowdown. I know there's been a lot of work with DRI2 as well. Is that complete to the point where you can run an OpenGL window on a composited desktop?

Not sure how well it translates, but I have an X4500HD and I haven't seen any problems with Compiz whenever I have tried it. I mostly use the compositor in Metacity. It's of the render, 2D based, variety.

DRI2 and OpenGL in a composited environment works very well. One of the last missing pieces was sync to vblank in DRI2, it has recently been fixed, but I think it will require Xserver 1.7?

jteb

06-03-2009, 03:35 PM

I'm new at these forums, so I'll first say hi!

As a reaction to the topic starter;

I didn't read all of the reactions, so I might be saying something that has been said before. However ..

Nvidia's proprioritary are pretty good, but atm you have some options. As people have been putting lots of work into oss drivers for intel/ati/nvidia, there are some things to be mentioned.

As a starter, I'm running compiz with all features running smoothly on a _i915_. I have to say though that I compile the entire X stack from git.

Lots of work has been going into the ati driver (by Dave Airlie, praise him) which actually makes the oss ati driver much better than the proprioritary driver (really).

For nvidia, you can try out the (bleeding edge) Mesa Gallium Nvidia stack, which is by now (I've tried) running much smoother that the official NVidia drivers.

So, in my opinion, saying that an NVidia is the best option, just is plainly wrong. It would have been half a year ago, but right now, you have tho option to choose. Do some googling and the http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/Mailinglists is good starter.

Cheers,
Jan

kxmas

06-04-2009, 08:00 PM

I'm new at these forums, so I'll first say hi!

So, in my opinion, saying that an NVidia is the best option, just is plainly wrong. It would have been half a year ago, but right now, you have tho option to choose. Do some googling and the http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/Mailinglists is good starter.

Cheers,
Jan

I have a 965 chip in my thinkpad along with t9300 core2. It's great that an old Pentium 3 can play 720p, but under Kubuntu 8.10, I couldn't. The out of the box experience under Kubuntu 9.04 hasn't been great when compared to what Nvidia offers, or compared to what Intel's chips do in Windows and OS X.

Right now, if you want decent performance with Intel, you have to do some work to get it, and then you'll likely run into some bugs.

It's improving, but I think we're six months away or so from a good, hassle free experience with Intel graphics.

Nexx

06-04-2009, 09:17 PM

I have a 965 chip in my thinkpad along with t9300 core2. It's great that an old Pentium 3 can play 720p, but under Kubuntu 8.10, I couldn't. The out of the box experience under Kubuntu 9.04 hasn't been great when compared to what Nvidia offers, or compared to what Intel's chips do in Windows and OS X.

Right now, if you want decent performance with Intel, you have to do some work to get it, and then you'll likely run into some bugs.

It's improving, but I think we're six months away or so from a good, hassle free experience with Intel graphics.Well, after extensive shopping around I've come to the conclusion that the EU laptop market seems to prefer ATi over nvidia ^u^ Low-end ATi cards are far more common place in "budget" range laptops, at least I'm yet to find a decent 15.4" laptop with nvidia GFX for £400-450.

As it turns out, the motherboard in one of my machines here is G45 based and has the X4500HD. I'd forgotten about it because at some point in the past, for a reason I can't remember, I put an nvidia card in it. I'm thinking about grabbing the latest Ubuntu live-CD and giving it a go to see what the experience is like (it's shamefully running Windows at the moment >.<).

Truth be told, as I said above, my budget is more likely to make the decision for me. The idea was to have a mobile PC as a nice addition without breaking the bank, not to spend way over the odds on something just to get an nvidia GFX card.

It really is a shame that Dell don't seem to want to release the Studio 14z over here in Europe. I'd order one tomorrow if they did, despite the RAM thing.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone who took the time to reply. I'll report back when I've had a chance to play with Ubuntu and the X4500HD.

Kano

06-05-2009, 05:26 AM

Btw. there is one thing that you might want to consider. If you want to try HyperSpace Hybrid, then Intel onboard + VT enabled CPU would be needed. I would like to test that too, but the stupid installer checks for laptop (most likely it tests for a battery) - and i do not have got a laptop.

http://www.hyperspace.com/Product-Specifications.aspx

DebianAroundParis

06-05-2009, 01:01 PM

With my Core2duo@2.8 and G33 (and kernel 2.6.29), I can play The Matrix@1080p perfectly smoothly with VLC, without using complex instructions in a console (which were mandatory up to now, and I could only use mplayer that way...so I could not pause a video, only abort it).
I can also now play Torcs smoothly at 1280*1024 on some circuits that were unplayable until now. A year ago no circuit was playable even at 800*600.
Intel and Xorg programmers (and the VLC ones too) are really doing a fine job!

Wyatt

06-05-2009, 02:02 PM

...I could not pause a video, only abort it).

:confused:
Begging pardon for the OT, but what does this comment actually mean? Does your distro disable all the mplayer hotkeys? (space = (un)pause; f = (un)fullscreen; etc...)

DebianAroundParis

06-05-2009, 03:13 PM

:confused:
Begging pardon for the OT, but what does this comment actually mean? Does your distro disable all the mplayer hotkeys? (space = (un)pause; f = (un)fullscreen; etc...)

I chose a long time ago not to learn the hotkeys of any software. So I had no idea I could use some with mplayer launched from the console.

Nexx

06-07-2009, 12:35 PM

Well I gave it a go.

This morning I downloaded the nightly LiveCD build of Ubuntu 9.10. I figured if I grabbed the nightly build I'd get a really up-to-date Intel driver and the associated bits. The driver was reported as 2.7.99, so I'm fairly sure it was good enough for my testing.

I booted it up and got the nice LiveCD desktop, no corruption or missing UI components, I checked and was indeed running with UXA, not EXA. So that seems much improved. The desktop was being nicely composited, fading windows in and out without issue, again this is much improved since I last tried.

I set gnome's visual effects to full and got wobbily windows and the couple of other effects to go with it. This was where I started to notice a little slowdown, but I figured I likely wouldn't be using that on a daily basis, so I ignored it.

Next up I installed mplayer and tested a couple of HD videos I have kicking around.

The Deus Ex 3 trailer was encoded with H264 at 720p. It ran almost as well as windows with the exception of the fast motion right at the end where it seemed to struggle, which I thought was a little odd.

"Meet the Spy", a WMV encoded at 720p was slightly jumpy throughout, again this video plays fine under Windows. It stuttered more on fast motion that slow.

I tried getting mplayer to output using gl or gl2 and even XvMC, but both gl options reduced the framerate to 2 or 3 fps and the XvMC option displayed nothing at all.

Being a LiveCD I was unable to test my Sam & Max games via WINE as there was insufficient space to install them.

I figured as I had a GeForce card on had I'd give that a try. Again I booted the LiveCD, but this time I dropped to the terminal, stopped GDM and installed the binary nvidia driver.

Upon restarting GDM I was taken to the same desktop as before (go figure!). I set about testing the same things as I'd run on the X4500HD.

The desktop effects were smooth even on full, which wasn't surprising considering the power difference between the 2 GPUs. What did surprise me was the difference in playing HD video's.

Both videos were smooth from start to finish, just as it is in Windows. I could even drag the window about and have it "wobble" without noticing a single jump.

Now this GeForce is a GF 7600GS, so it doesn't have access to VDPAU. There wasn't any hardware offloading happening, so I'm a little stumped as to why the Intel card struggled so much.

So far it's looking like I may have to try and put a little extra money aside and get a laptop with an nvidia GPU in it. I know I'd be happier that way.

Thanks again to everyone for your input, and for putting up with me asking all these questions ^.~ If anyone else has anything they'd like to add, please do so ^^

All the best.

bridgman

06-07-2009, 12:54 PM

What is your screen res ? Even upscaling motion video (Xv-type work) requires a fair amount of shader power, and I'm pretty sure the 7600GS has a lot more than the Intel IGP.

Nexx

06-07-2009, 02:43 PM

What is your screen res ? Even upscaling motion video (Xv-type work) requires a fair amount of shader power, and I'm pretty sure the 7600GS has a lot more than the Intel IGP.My screen is 2048x1152, but I was playing the video in a window at it's native resolution, so it wasn't being upscaled at all.

Wyatt

06-07-2009, 05:39 PM

Kano

06-07-2009, 07:06 PM

@bridgman

I did not know that you work for Intel now ;)

Nexx

06-07-2009, 09:05 PM

And just to make sure, this is bare, no-frills mplayer (and especially not gmplayer, which is terrible), right?

EDIT: Also, how does it do if you disable the more demanding compositing effects, or turn compositing off completely?Yup, mplayer from the command line, launched by "mplayer filename", or for the output plugins "mplayer -vo plugin filename".

I didn't try using metacity --replace and then testing the videos, but performance was the same no matter what setting visual effects was set to.

kxmas

06-08-2009, 09:05 PM

And just to make sure, this is bare, no-frills mplayer (and especially not gmplayer, which is terrible), right?

EDIT: Also, how does it do if you disable the more demanding compositing effects, or turn compositing off completely?

Come on, a Pentium Dual Core 1.73GHz can decode 720p "without a hassle", why should anyone with a new processor have to disable compositing?

Why is the performance of the Intel chip so superior on Windows and OS X? I badly want Intel to do better on Linux. They're doing the right thing. They're completely open and I own their product. However, the performance in Linux leaves me puzzled.

DebianAroundParis

06-09-2009, 05:01 AM

I guess that the quality of the support of each Intel graphics chip varies a lot. It seems that the support for playing Full HD videos on G31/G33 is now perfect (on my PC) but the support for the more powerful G45 is behind. I say: just be patient. The support for my G33 was minimal when I bought this mobo, but it has improved tremendously, so much that I stopped exploring which graphics card I should buy to be able to watch Full HD videos. I am now perfectly happy with what I have got (I used to be very disappointed by the G33 and Intel programmers before).
My constant use of the latest versions of Mplayer and VLC and the related codecs in Debian Experimental may also take a significant part in the improvements I saw.
The fact is that any Canon 5D MkII video plays perfectly fine here, whatever the format or resolution.
Looking at the utilization of the two cores of my Core2duo@2.8gHz, I see that when playing a 1080p video from the Canon 5D MkII with xine, xine uses between 60% and 94% (with one spike to 99.99%), and xorg moves between 30% and 60%.

Kano

06-09-2009, 05:48 AM

Well beginning with 3 ghz it seems to be smooth even in software single threaded for 1080p. When you look at the mplayer hp there are instructions how to compile it for multithreading, that might help you.

Wyatt

06-09-2009, 07:08 AM

Come on, a Pentium Dual Core 1.73GHz can decode 720p "without a hassle", why should anyone with a new processor have to disable compositing?

Is not disabling extraneous stuff the first step in troubleshooting a problem? Graphical user interfaces and compositing window managers fall into this category. :)

Nexx

06-09-2009, 02:48 PM

Is not disabling extraneous stuff the first step in troubleshooting a problem? Graphical user interfaces and compositing window managers fall into this category. :)Just a little update as I had the chance to sit down and have another play with Ubuntu and the GMA X4500HD.

Disabling any visual effects from the "Appearance" section seems to disable all compositing. When there's none of that going on the video is almost smooth, there's still a few "hitches". What's interesting is that the mplayer status line in the console only shows a couple of dropped frames when the video is started, it doesn't increment when these hitches happen. Reported CPU usage for the video decoder over the entire video is between 40 and 45%.

I installed the compiz settings application and ran the benchmark plugin. At the composited desktop with nothing running it barely managed 30fps. With the 720p video running it drops down to 20-22fps. Dragging the video window, and having it wobble, drops the FPS into the high teens.

Using either the gl or gl2 mplayer output plugins increases the CPU usage greatly. mplayer reports that the "video out" cpu usage is around 35-40% and the video is very jumpy. The dropped frame count only increments occasionally, despite the jumpy video.

I re-ran the same tests on the GeForce 7600GS. I know it's a far more powerful GPU, but I figured it couldn't hurt.

FPS at the bare desktop was reported as being between 45 and 50 and nothing would cause a drop. I played with multiple compiz effects, even ran additional OpenGL applications, but it wouldn't budge. The video stayed smooth throughout.

I wondered if the Intel problems might have been related to the fact that the onboard GPU was only getting 32MB of the system memory allocated to it. The xorg log showed it was gaining an additional 256MB, but I went into the BIOS to try and change it anyway.

There were 2 settings related to video RAM.

PAVP Mode:
This could be set to "Lite" or "Paranoid". When set to "Lite", no matter how much memory was allocated, the X server and Intel driver would segfault on startup, immediately after trying to initialize UXA.

When set to Paranoid, the X server would hard-lock the PC. It became unresponsive to keyboard input and stopped replying to network pings. Hitting restart was the only option.

DVMT:
This setting directly affected the RAM allocated to the agpgart, nothing else.

I don't know what else to test and I can't explain why the video performance is so different between the GPU's. Yes the 7600GS is more powerful, but surely as the CPU can decode the 720p video with no problems it can't require that much GPU power to display it on the screen. It's not like I'm resizing it or anything, it's playing 1:1 in a window.

If it weren't for the huge price difference, and general difficulty in finding a laptop with a 9300M GS / 9400M in, I'd have given up already =(

Thanks again all

Wyatt

06-09-2009, 08:39 PM

kxmas

06-09-2009, 11:23 PM

Is not disabling extraneous stuff the first step in troubleshooting a problem? Graphical user interfaces and compositing window managers fall into this category. :)

Not in this case. If you have to disable compositing every time you want to watch a 720p movie, then it's still broken. All you're doing is finding a work around for the poor consumers who bought Intel graphics. In this case, Nexx is just trying to determine if Intel is a suitable product for his needs.

DebianAroundParis

06-10-2009, 04:44 AM

Oh yeah, I just remembered...I think I've heard that the 2.6 driver series currently performs better than the 2.7 for the Intel drivers. I can't rightly verify that right now, but I think it's been though the grapevine. :)

I use 2.7.1-1 in Debian and get better results than with 2.6.

I just now went from kernel 2.6.29 to 2.6.30, and updated several xorg files to 7.4+2, and now when I play the same 1080p Canon 5D MkII file, xine or vlc still hover between 60% and 94% (with one spike over 100%) but xorg stays low at 10%, much lower than before. And the video looks better, more smooth.
If I use the following command in a console I do not get any slowdown when the player reaches 100%:
mplayer -lavdopts threads=2:fast:skiploopfilter=all nameofthevideo.mp4

I am also getting much higher frames per second in Torcs. Between 15 and 30 at 1280*1024. When I bought this mobo, Torcs was so slow and so many frames were dropped (entire seconds were dropped at at time) that it was unplayable even at 800*600.
So yes, there are good reasons to trust Intel developers to improve the performance of their chipsets a lot.

DebianAroundParis

06-13-2009, 01:08 PM

Thanks to VLC 1.0.rc2 and all the latest codecs in Debian Experimental, I get no more slowndown and no more dropped frames or glitches in the middle of that 1.8 GB file from the Canon 5D MkII, a huge file with a very high bitrate since it lasts only 6 minutes!
And this with more software running at the same time.
Getting better all the time! :)

Nexx

06-18-2009, 03:57 PM

Well, I decided to take the plunge and bought a laptop with a GM45 chipset and the GMA 4500MHD. I do like Intels open source stance and that they're contributing so much to Linux as a whole. I was prepared to take the leap of faith ;)

I'm probably going to have to learn how to compile the necessary bits from git for Arch Linux, but I'm confident with the command line and am always willing to learn ^^

Thanks to everyone who contributed, I really appreciate all your advice.

DebianAroundParis

06-19-2009, 03:26 AM

Keep us informed how things are going!

brot

06-19-2009, 04:48 AM

Hi Nexx.

I had do decide the same thing some months ago, and i decided to go the Intel way. I am currently sitting at my Inspiron 1525 with a GMA X3100, using the latest Intel drivers, GEM and KMS. Acceleration Method is UXA, and i am running KDE on Gentoo.

1) How is performance with the Intel driver these days? I'm thinking of maybe using a composited desktop, can the 4500MHD handle that without massive slowdowns?

Composition is one area where it really can shine. Since you worried about Video playback and things, i am right now watching 3 videos, one of it a fullhd one. No lags or problems while switching between Desktops and Applications, everything feels smooth. 2D drawing performance is good (openttd runs, lol ;) ) and 3D is working like it should. Right now, the drivers arent using 100% of what the GMA can deliver, but its enough to play Warcraft 3 here and even Nexuiz does work here :) (at Medium settings).

2) How well does the 4500MHD power-save under Linux? Battery life isn't the most important thing, but a couple of hours would be great.

It uses certainly less power than a dedicated card. A friend of mine had bought his Laptop 1 month after mine, and he got a 13" XPS with an nvidia card. Even though he has the smaller screen (13" vs 15") and LED backlight, i am using less watts while surfing etc. Playing 3D games, his power usage increases much more than mine (but he has way more FPS too ;) ). So i would say power-save works really great.

3) Is there any plans to expose the HD decoding engine of the 4500MHD under Linux? I know it's available under Windows, but who wants to use that? ^u^

While i cant say much about the HD decoding engine except that intel planned something some time ago, and that HD decoding will be accelerated with Gallium-drivers, there are no problems with HD-Movie playback in Linux. Most work will have to be done by the CPU, but i dont think that this will be a problem for a Laptop bought nowadays. (except netbooks ;) )

Any other thoughts would be appreciated!

Well, i just can say here that i am happy with my decision. I have more 3d power than i expected, have a really low power-usage and everything does work like it should. Also, i expect the driver to be much much nicer with the next release.

I hope i could help.

brot

Nexx

06-19-2009, 11:34 PM

A little update ^^

My laptop arrived. I ordered a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Pi 3525 with a Core2 Duo T6400, 4GB RAM and an Intel GM45 chipset (GMA 4500MHD). So far everything is going great. I took a backup of the pre-installed OS, just in case I want it in the future (unlikely).

I've done some quick testing using the very same Ubuntu disk I used when testing my desktop G45 board. The compiz benchmark sits at a solid 60fps and desktop usage is -very- smooth. Both the HD videos I tried on the desktop board previously played without problem.

Overall I'm very impressed. There is a slight issue with the laptop when trying to run a 64bit OS, whether it be Linux or Windows, but I knew about that prior to purchasing it. I only plan to run a 32bit Linux desktop and the little RAM I loose won't be missed.

Hopefully soon I can get Linux actually installed, instead of just running from a live environment. I'll make sure to update as things progress.

One thing I did notice however, was an error from the DRM module complaining about an MTRR region type mismatch. The laptop is shut down now, I'll post the exact error in the morning. Despite the warning, everything still seemed smooth, so I guess it's not a major problem.