Arch Linux

SomeGuyDude

Member

Registered: 2008-10-09

Posts: 271

Okay, so WHY is intel's legacy driver way better than the new one?

I bit the bullet and installed the intel-legacy video driver because I wanted to see if it was true that the old one was better than the new.

Result: Compiz is REMARKABLY smoother. As in, I'd forgotten just how pretty a silky smooth Compiz setup really is. I've done no benchmarking, don't care to. The point is, for example, I can set the opacity to 85% in the Move Window plugin and it doesn't hose the framerate.

My question is, why? What's going on in the new driver that made the performance totally tank? When there's a new driver and EVERYONE seems to have the same problem, I'm a little confused as to why they "improved" it.

---

And in the midst of such perfection,
I can't help but feel diseased.

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Okay, so WHY is intel's legacy driver way better than the new one?

I'm not an Intel user, but I also haven't been living under a large rock, so I know that the new driver is implementing new technology i.e. KMS. New technology occasionally(!) has bugs, so draw your own conclusions.

lucke

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2004-11-30

Posts: 4,018

Re: Okay, so WHY is intel's legacy driver way better than the new one?

Not only KMS, but also DRI2 and GEM. The next Intel video driver release should support only UXA, getting rid of the legacy cruft and concentrating on supporting one option properly.

http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/col … g_features
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/col … t_graphics

Last edited by lucke (2009-06-06 14:08:13)

baze

Member

Registered: 2005-10-30

Posts: 393

Re: Okay, so WHY is intel's legacy driver way better than the new one?

all this new stuff isn't completely optimized and its kernel drm part has some issues in 2.6.29 too, but with 2.6.30 the new intel driver will be much faster. i tried -rc3 to -rc7, which still had some stability problems, but compositing and opengl was back to its old performance. since we're at -rc8 now, it shouldn't take long until 2.6.30 gets released and performance will be good again _and_ you get the new features. i guess one or two weeks at the most.

skottish

Forum Fellow

From: Here

Registered: 2006-06-16

Posts: 7,942

Re: Okay, so WHY is intel's legacy driver way better than the new one?

On a laptop that I maintain, the legacy driver is the only one that is stable. The upside is that having the system not crash with every log out/TTY switch is helpful. The downside is that colors and brightness are of much lower quality than the newer drivers.

b9anders

Member

Registered: 2007-11-07

Posts: 691

Re: Okay, so WHY is intel's legacy driver way better than the new one?

I use the new driver on kernel 2.6.29 with uxa and performance here is better than with the legacy driver.

combuster

Member

From: Serbia

Registered: 2008-09-30

Posts: 711

Website

Re: Okay, so WHY is intel's legacy driver way better than the new one?

2.7.0 + 2.6.29 and performance sukZ with a few bugs... 2.7.0 + 2.6.30-rc8 no changes at all... Havent tried intel-newest though

jacob_

Member

Registered: 2009-04-15

Posts: 12

Re: Okay, so WHY is intel's legacy driver way better than the new one?

Intel git just solved an issue i've had for months that hung the gpu. Perforance seems slightly better than -newest too, but its hard to tell...

Ranguvar

Member

Registered: 2008-08-12

Posts: 2,549

Re: Okay, so WHY is intel's legacy driver way better than the new one?

The Intel video driver and the parts it works wit in the kernel (and in X.Org) are experiencing a TON of development recently is all. Expect great performance and great features soon, until then there may be issues

combuster

Member

From: Serbia

Registered: 2008-09-30

Posts: 711

Website

Re: Okay, so WHY is intel's legacy driver way better than the new one?

Man, I've just tried out intel driver from git and a custom compiled 2.6.30-rc8 and all of prior bugs remained and there are some performance regressions (urt is unplayable, 20fps max)...

b9anders

Member

Registered: 2007-11-07

Posts: 691

Re: Okay, so WHY is intel's legacy driver way better than the new one?

Hmm... playing around with KMS, I just realised that I have not been using uxa with the current driver. Switching to uxa screws up any transparency and flash vids won't load. Really hope they manage to sort this out before they force the switch on us with the next major release.