Intel Linux OpenGL Driver Remains Slower Than Windows

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Linux OpenGL Driver Remains Slower Than Windows

Recently there was the NVIDIA graphics comparison under Windows 7 and Linux providing new data at how the cross-platform NVIDIA driver is comparing between Ubuntu 12.10, Kubuntu 12.10, and Windows 7 Pro. Aside from Ubuntu's Unity desktop with Compiz impairing the performance, the results were competitive. Next up now is a look at Intel Sandy Bridge and Intel Ivy Bridge graphics when comparing the performance of the three operating systems.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=17920

[enrico.tagliavini]

The nexuiz result is quite surprising. Are you using S3TC with mesa driver?

[orome]

For Unigine Heaven there is just the Windows 7 numbers since the Intel Linux support for this more demanding game engine isn't in great shape on Mesa.

I'm running UH3.0 without significant problems on 9.0 branch (last week) and mesa master. Yes, I need to run on medium shaders and no tesselation because of missing features, but it's far from unusable.

[Kano]

Nice to hear, however it is not really surprising that linux is often slower than win - the driver does not share code between the os. That's differnt to fglrx/nvidia binary drivers.

[Kayden]

I'm running UH3.0 without significant problems on 9.0 branch (last week) and mesa master. Yes, I need to run on medium shaders and no tesselation because of missing features, but it's far from unusable.

I'm also curious what the issue is. I run Unigine Heaven rather frequently and it works for me. Note that you need to install the drirc that comes with Mesa: cp src/mesa/drivers/dri/common/drirc /etc/drirc # or ~/.drirc. (The intent is that distributions should do this for you...) This tells Mesa to work around a number of bugs in the Unigine demos: their use of extensions without asking for them, and their broken use of the GL_ARB_blend_func_extended extension. Without it, I believe you get cloudy grey rendering.

There were a few Mesa bugs relating to Heaven as well, but those should have already been fixed in the version that Michael tested.

[Veerappan]

The nexuiz result is quite surprising. Are you using S3TC with mesa driver?

From http://openbenchmarking.org/system/1...012.10/glxinfo
OpenGL extensions:
<snip>
GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc, GL_EXT_texture_env_combine,

[bofh80]

Windows 7 : is Aero On?
Kubuntu: kwin?

[sacygan]

The latest Windows driver for Intel is 15.​28.​0.​2792. Is there any reason You are not using this one?

[liamdawe]

I really wish they would work more on performance than features for Ubuntu.

Liam of www.gamingonlinux.com and www.linux4today.com

[curaga]

This tells Mesa to work around a number of bugs in the Unigine demos: their use of extensions without asking for them, and their broken use of the GL_ARB_blend_func_extended extension. Without it, I believe you get cloudy grey rendering.

There were a few Mesa bugs relating to Heaven as well, but those should have already been fixed in the version that Michael tested.

Didn't they fix the bugs in Heaven? Or only some?

Certainly app workarounds in the gl lib are just wrong.