Intel Graphics Regressions In Ubuntu 9.04?

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Graphics Regressions In Ubuntu 9.04?

A month ago we compared Intel's graphics performance between Ubuntu 8.10 and the latest Ubuntu 9.04 daily snapshot at the time. With those tests we found Intel's performance had degraded significantly. However, with many new graphics packages having been released since then, we have carried out some additional tests this morning to look at where the Intel Linux graphics performance stands today.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=13416

[bulletxt]

ouch . it seems GPUs under linux just love to have issues all the times .

[Creak]

Have you discussed with Intel or Mesa or Xorg to see what's the problem?
It's not normal to have such a performance fall... And, most of all, they must know something about it, no? They surely have an explanation.

[SyXbiT]

Have you discussed with Intel or Mesa or Xorg to see what's the problem?
It's not normal to have such a performance fall... And, most of all, they must know something about it, no? They surely have an explanation.

great article, very interesting.

just one note, the T400 uses DDR3 RAM, not DDR2

[some-guy]

It seems like every was hinting that this had happened...

[bridgman]

The developers certainly seem to be aware of it (see #dri-devel IRC a week or two ago). Gutting a working driver and rebuilding it around a central memory manager is about as invasive a change as you can get; I'm not surprised there are performance issues.

We went through all this about 5 years ago on the Windows drivers and maybe 18 months ago on fglrx; the end result is always good... eventually... but things usually look pretty grim in the middle. Of course with a closed source driver you don't have to *show* anyone the really slow versions

First step is usually to get all the new stuff working; second step is to make the performance not suck. I think they're just starting the second step now.

[macemoneta]

While I understand that major changes are occurring and the graphics are a work in progress, that doesn't explain why distributions are picking up these broken pieces.

The purpose of a distribution is to put together a working set of software. If I as an end-user have to swap out subsystems and recompile chunks to get a working stable system, the distributions are not doing their job.

I can't speak for anyone else, obviously, but I'd rather hear that something wasn't upgraded because it wasn't stable, instead of "we gave you the leading edge software, but oops, it doesn't work". I've had more system hangs and video failures with the new graphics subsystem in the last few months than I ever had in the least stable Windows version.

This didn't catch the distributions by surprise; everyone knew the changes were in progress. This is the same situation as those distributions that went to KDE 4.0 from 3.5, or to the new (broken) ALSA. Why? Bragging rights seem to be overriding common sense at this point. Once is a mistake. Twice is bad judgment. Three times is a trend. In the long run, this will undermine people's faith in Linux.

[Craig73]

While I understand that major changes are occurring and the graphics are a work in progress, that doesn't explain why distributions are picking up these broken pieces....

Ubuntu 9.04 is alpha software - it isn't even beta yet. Please don't confuse software included in development releases that is unstable with choices about which packages are shipped in the final distribution.

(Perhaps Phoronix should have a standard disclaimer at the start of all reviews for alpha/beta software)

[Craig73]

Oh ... and I run the Intel driver, and Intrepid, and Ubuntu has only gotten more and more stable for me (except perhaps the current webcam frustrations)

[macemoneta]

Ubuntu 9.04 is alpha software - it isn't even beta yet. Please don't confuse software included in development releases that is unstable with choices about which packages are shipped in the final distribution.

(Perhaps Phoronix should have a standard disclaimer at the start of all reviews for alpha/beta software)

Ubuntu isn't the only distribution to pick up this code. Other distributions, like Fedora 10, are not in beta anymore.