Intel Enables Tessellation Shader Support In Open-Source Linux Driver

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Enables Tessellation Shader Support In Open-Source Linux Driver

As an exciting early Christmas present for Intel Linux users, ARB_tessellation_shader support has landed in Mesa Git as needed by OpenGL 4!..

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-Lands-ARB-Tessellation

[Kayden]

Merry Christmas! (:

[pal666]

B..b...but I wished for a real eight-core desktop processor

8core desktop processor is so 2011

[baka0815]

Merry Christmas! (:

Merry Christmas (or whatever it is you're celebrating) and thanks for the present to all the folks working on it!

[M@GOid]

8core desktop processor is so 2011

I know right? They sell 16 core/ 32 threads processors since 2014.

[eydee]

2fps with R600g and dedicated card in Heaven, I wonder how these IGPs perform.

[Ancurio]

B..b...but I wished for a real eight-core desktop processor :P Joking aside, how much do you think dynamic level of detail through tessellation will improve performance on Intel in real world situations? (higher vertex shader load for skinned animations, and tiny triangles vs. geometry tessellation on the fly)

I mean, it's an additional load on the GPU.. so it's going to perform worse than without tessellation in any scenario.

[mdias]

I mean, it's an additional load on the GPU.. so it's going to perform worse than without tessellation in any scenario.

Only benchmarking can tell. Remember that you're using less memory (therefore less memory bandwidth) and now you can put more stuff on the caches.

[ultimA]

I mean, it's an additional load on the GPU.. so it's going to perform worse than without tessellation in any scenario.

Not necessarily. Tesselation trades memory bandwidth for GPU compute resources. So if your application+hardware combination was bandwidth limited and was not fully utilizing the GPU otherwise, tesselation can improve performance by having to send less vertices to the GPU while still retaining the same quality.

[eydee]

I mean, it's an additional load on the GPU.. so it's going to perform worse than without tessellation in any scenario.

Except when you're using the strange thing called Catalyst. It scores higher in Heaven with extreme tessellation than with no tessellation at all. Though it's a driver issue of course, technically you're absolutely right.