"intel" i915 bad 3D performance

English Hardware
#1

Hey Folks,

I’m using a Intel 945 GM notebook graphiccard with openSUSE 11.1, KDE4.2 and Xorg 1.5.2.

Direct Rendering is activated, I get ~600fps with glxgears but the performance in 3D (openGL)-apps is very bad. Sauerbraten, Brutalchess (SDL) and many other 3D-games have a very bad performance and just give me 14 - 20 fps.

xorg-conf parts:

Section "Device"
  BoardName    "945 GM"
  Driver       "intel" 
  Identifier   "Device[0]"
  Option       "monitor-LVDS" "Monitor[0]"
  VendorName   "Intel"
EndSection


Section "DRI"
    Group      "video"
    Mode       0660
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
  Option       "Composite" "on"
EndSection

Is there a chance to get better 3d performance?

peace out

#2

Driver “intel”

Never gave me great performance in the past I used to use

Driver “i810”

It is the older Intel driver and always worked better for me. I can’t test it in openSUSE 11.1 as I don’t have an Intel video chipset any longer, but it is worth a try.

#3

openSUSE 11.1 doesn’t seem to have i810 anymore, can’t find them in the repos and when changing the setting in xorg.conf X won’t restart and says no screen found…

#4

I just did a quick search in Yast for 915resolution which used to be standard in all previous releases, but couldn’t find it, a google turned it up.

RPM Search 915resolution-0.5.3-83.9.i586.rpm

It may or may not help

#5

There’s known problems with the new acceleration architecture the Intel driver switched over to on many chipsets.

If you try going back to the older version from (to?) EXA that might help you.

There’s a thread in the Factory mailing list late November / early December on the issue. Also the benchmark results at Phoronix, where OS 11.1 did poorly is partly down to that issue.

Mandriva did well because they kept the old default.

#6

shannonkane wrote:
> Hey Folks,
>
> I’m using a Intel 945 GM notebook graphiccard with openSUSE 11.1,
> KDE4.2 and Xorg 1.5.2.
>
> Direct Rendering is activated, I get ~600fps with glxgears but the
> performance in 3D (openGL)-apps is very bad. Sauerbraten, Brutalchess
> (SDL) and many other 3D-games have a very bad performance and just give
> me 14 - 20 fps.

That’s sounds about right.
It’s not a gaming GPU. Even their fastest GPU barely
enters the midrange performance arena.

#7

cjcox wrote:
> shannonkane wrote:
>> Hey Folks,
>>
>> I’m using a Intel 945 GM notebook graphiccard with openSUSE 11.1,
>> KDE4.2 and Xorg 1.5.2.
>>
>> Direct Rendering is activated, I get ~600fps with glxgears but the
>> performance in 3D (openGL)-apps is very bad. Sauerbraten, Brutalchess
>> (SDL) and many other 3D-games have a very bad performance and just give
>> me 14 - 20 fps.
>
> That’s sounds about right.
> It’s not a gaming GPU. Even their fastest GPU barely
> enters the midrange performance arena.

Just for comparison… a true midrange card, the NV 7600GT
gets over 7500 fps in glxgears (and the reason it’s that
low is that’s with composite rendering enabled… so
yes… I can have semi-transparent windows on cubes with
3d graphics… whoo hoo!).

(Nvidia with the Nvidia closed source driver)