Skylake & Newer Could Still See Faster Linux Graphics Performance

Written by Michael Larabel in Intel on 22 July 2017 at 07:55 AM EDT. 18 Comments
INTEL
With my recent tests of Intel Kabylake graphics on Linux 4.13 showing no change in performance, it was asked whether the Intel Linux graphics driver has plateaued for reaching maximum performance. It hasn't.

Our tests when we compare Intel's OpenGL performance between Windows and Linux tend to be mixed. For older hardware, the Intel open-source Linux driver is about as fast as the Intel Windows OpenGL driver while Direct3D tests have shown it still can be faster. When looking at the most recent hardware generation, the Intel Linux driver usually tends to come up slightly behind the Windows driver with the Linux stack still maturing, but we've seen the Intel Linux driver continuing to get better and better over the years.

In response to the recent questions though about Intel's driver performance plateauing or not, we have some new commentary. For Skylake and newer hardware, developers are working on "major bandwidth improvements" that could enhance the performance. Specifically, it should "help a lot with the performance gap between Windows and Linux on fullscreen apps, especially at high resolutions."

Can't wait to benchmark that!
Related News
About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

Popular News This Week