Intel Linux Graphics On Ubuntu Still Flaky

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Linux Graphics On Ubuntu Still Flaky

Back in May we shared that the Ubuntu Intel graphics performance was still in bad shape after testing out very early Ubuntu 9.10 packages. The netbook experience was killed in Ubuntu 9.04 after a buggy Intel Linux graphics stack led to slow performance, stability issues, screen corruption, and other problems. Months have passed since we last exhaustively looked at the Intel Linux graphics stack, but we have just carried out some new tests using Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 3. This new development release of Ubuntu carries the latest kernel, Mesa, and Intel driver packages as we see how the graphics performance is with an Intel 945 and G43 chipsets.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=14082

[combuster]

Somehow I wouldn't agree on performance of intel drivers, with 2.6.31-rc4 and xf86-video-intel 2.8.0 and mesa 7.5 everything works great, I play urban terror almost every day and not once did it froze my system and I have playable fps (25-40). We agree on the bug count, only one affecting me is brightness hotkeys that doesn't work when kms is enabled.

Sure that things could be better but I finally have performance that I had with EXA almost two years back. I have a GM965 chipset with x3100...
Even though I have dual memory channel enabled (and I've heard that it is causing some major performance issues with intel drivers) I'm finally satisfied with current situation and probably just out of curiosity and not because of necessity will I test snapshot's of intel drivers. Stability comes first and I have that now, performance... well I know that x3100 doesn't have any pep for gaming but as long it doesn't tear my video's and doesn't choke on compiz - me happy

[Regenwald]

omg ubuntu again...slower than 9.04...9.04 was horrible, it's a *really* heavy regression...intel 2.8 works perfectly with other distri...what do they at canoncial??...how incompetent can they be??! don't get it...ok it's an early alpha version, but it's blind to hope for a heavy improvement...one more reason *not* to use ubuntu!

[FireBurn]

Like I ask on most of your articles, have you raised a bug for any of these regressions? Either on freedesktop or with ubuntu?

Also how do you know it's Mesa 7.5 that's the issue and not libdrm or the drm kernel driver?

MAybe if you spent some time talking to the developers on IRC and less time running the PTS some of these regressions would be fixed

Hope you reply to this

Mike

[Kano]

Well Intel onboard gfx was never top notch, that's clear. It is a chipset for websurfing, office and less demanding games. As it does not support OpenGL 2 not even HoN will run on it. On desktop systems that's definitly no problem as you can add a PCI-E card if needed. Laptops users should know that the chipset is not designed for games before they buy it.

[VisitorQ]

Actually, using the Karmic alpha brings a very good experience from a users point of view. For example, when I connect an external monitor on my laptop, the desktop wasn't extended over the entire second screen, it was cut off somewhere in the middle of the screen. The new drivers fixed that issue, and also I can plug in my monitor, run the display tool from the prefs menu, and the external screen already turns on at the desired resolution before I actually press a button on the display dialog.
Also, the desktop effects work fluently on Karmic, not choppy what-so-ever. Of course this is all subjective information and I'm sure that these tests get a more objective result for certain issues, but the user experience will increase with the next Ubuntu release. I wanted to send a thumbs up to the devvers involved, but Im not sure to use a bug report for that, therefore I'll do it here

[fabiank22]

Well Intel onboard gfx was never top notch, that's clear. It is a chipset for websurfing, office and less demanding games. As it does not support OpenGL 2

OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) 965GM GEM 20090114
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.5-devel
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20

Running a x3100 on Fedora 11, since Rawhide 12 is broken this week

So yeah, they have OpenGl 2.

[combuster]

I'm running arch linux with custom 2.6.31-rc4 kernel and as I've said earlier this is the best performance from intel I've seen so far. I've filed around five or six bug reports @bugzilla and they have all been fixed except brightness keys but there is a workaround with acpi_brightness=vendor kernel parametar. Ubuntu is the most popular distro but karmic isn't exactly a perfect enviroment for benchmarking since it's heavy alpha still. I've been following the development of intel drivers for quite some time now and this is by far the best job they did - kms works great, performance is equal to exa and stability is great. As far as the games are concerned I would agree with Kano, as long as users don't expect from their intel gpu's to do wonders I think they'll be satisfied with current performance, I hope it is going to be better in the future but for now I'm happy with the one I have now...

[L33F3R]

I play urban terror almost every day and not once did it froze my system and I have playable fps (25-40).

Thats crap FPS.

[BlackStar]

omg ubuntu again...slower than 9.04...9.04 was horrible, it's a *really* heavy regression...intel 2.8 works perfectly with other distri...what do they at canoncial??...how incompetent can they be??! don't get it...ok it's an early alpha version, but it's blind to hope for a heavy improvement...one more reason *not* to use ubuntu!

Ubuntu 9.04 was easily the best Ubuntu release to date. No, I don't have an Intel IGP, but my two systems (laptop w/ nvidia running from a usb stick, desktop w/ ati on a regular hard drive) run better than 8.10 on all measurable accounts.

Thats crap FPS.

It's an Intel IGP what did you expect? Shared memory tends to kill fps.