Intel HD 4000 Ivy Bridge Graphics On Linux

From these Linux graphics tests carried out, the CPU temperature of the i7-3770K was about 5°C warmer than the i5-2400S and i5-2500K.

The Ivy Bridge processor was going through about 15% (10 Watts) more power than the Sandy Bridge processors that were compared for reference, but even so was slightly better than the power consumption of the A8-3870K Llano when using AMD's official Linux driver.

As you can see from these initial results, even when factoring in the clock differences of the different Intel CPUs, the Ivy Bridge graphics technology delivers a huge boost over Sandy Bridge. The power efficiency of Ivy Bridge under Linux is also boosted. The Intel Sandy Bridge graphics were already quite compelling under Linux, especially with a first-rate open-source Mesa driver, but now the Intel Linux graphics situation is even more attractive. Ivy Bridge is a huge win for Linux users who are concerned with the best desktop/graphics experience while being on an open-source driver. Intel's Linux graphics driver is the most full-featured and optimized open-source driver available at this time. In some of the tests, the Intel Ivy Bridge graphics were even quite competitive with the AMD Fusion A8-3870K on AMD's highly-optimized Catalyst Linux driver.

The next Ivy Bridge graphics articles will look at the performance in different Mesa/kernel configurations, comparing Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge graphics at matching frequencies, and there's a large comparison forthcoming of different AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards on their respective Gallium3D drivers when compared to Ivy Bridge and its classic Mesa DRI driver. Lots of good things are coming up, so stay tuned.