Intel Graphics Benchmarking Weekend

Intel Graphics Benchmarking Weekend

 

Team XBMC

August 29, 20081 min read

I long suspected something to not be 100% correct with Intel’s Linux drivers for Graphics, so before this weekend I set out to do some benchmarking. Here’s what happened before:

I chatted briefly with people in #Intel-gfx on FREENODE earlier this week, understandably they thought I was bitching, I can’t blame them ;) A couple of days earlier I tried XBMC+projectM @1080p on my Mac Mini that I won @ DevCon (Thanks Boxee!). I did this test, because I’m VERY disappointed with the 5 (five) FPS I get on XBMC+projectM on my more powerful Aopen MiniPC using Ubuntu 8.04.1

So I tested projectM on OSX, and I got a mindblowing 20-60fps (30-40 average)FPS! I had heard that OS X had better drivers for Intel Graphics than Linux, but this was just ridiculous.

Some days later, some chaps in #intel-gfx suggested I did a little benchmarking. First someone suggested q3a (Quake 3 Arena) but this game is so old it won’t even install in OS X 10.5. Someone then suggested Nexuiz, a FOSS game that runs on Linux, OS X & Windows.

Here’s what my testing resulted in:

Now I need to find a good way to let Intel Linux Driver Developers know about these results. If you got any tips, please email or leave a comment