Intel Haswell-ULT Graphics Don't Change Much With Linux 3.17, Mesa 10.4

The Linux 3.17 kernel that's currently under development does provide many new features overall but for those using the Intel HD Graphics of Haswell-ULT chips, there doesn't appear to be much in the way of any performance improvements and at least no regressions. Likewise, Mesa 10.4 isn't doing too much for the Haswell hardware on the matter of frame-rates.

The Haswell-ULT CPUs are primarily within Intel ultrabooks but they're also found in petite, passively-cooled devices like the CompuLab Intense-PC2 that I talked about this morning. With the IPC2 and its Core i7 4600U I ran some benchmarks comparing Linux 3.16 stable against Linux 3.17 Git. The Core i7 4600U is a dual-core+HT CPU with 2.1GHz base clock frequency that clocks up to 3.3GHz in its turbo performance state. This Haswell-ULT CPU boasts Intel HD Graphics 4400.

When comparing the Linux 3.16 and 3.17 Git kernels using an Ubuntu 14.10 daily snapshot with Mesa 10.2.6, the results were basically the same. You can find that data within 1409135-LI-HASWELLUL02 on OpenBenchmarking.org. Now you know...

Likewise, from the same system in similar conditions are benchmarks of Mesa 10.2.6 (as currently packaged and found in Ubuntu 14.10) against Mesa 10.4-devel Git (via the Launchpad Oibaf PPA), those results are 1409133-LI-MESAOIBAF29 on OpenBenchmarking.org.