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I have always associated Intel iGPUs with good drivers but people seem to often complain about their Linux dGPU drivers in these threads. I hope it is just an i

I have always associated Intel iGPUs with good drivers but people seem to often complain about their Linux dGPU drivers in these threads. I hope it is just an issue of them trying to break into a new field, rather than a slipping of their GPU drivers in general…

jorvi 2y ago
Intel switched over to a new driver for dGPUs and any iGPU newer than Skylake(?). The newest beta-ish driver is Xe, the main driver is Intel HD, and the old driver is i915. People complaining experienced the teething issues of early Xe builds.
- sirn 2y ago
  i915 is still the main kernel mode driver on Linux for every Intel GPUs up to Alchemist. xe kmd is used by Battlemage by default (as of 6.12). There's a Mesa DRI driver, called i965 (originally made for Broadwater chipset, thus the 965 numbering), which has since been replaced by either: - Crocus for anything up to Broadwell (Gen 8) - Iris for anything from Broadwell and newer Then there's a Video Acceleration driver, which is (also) called i965. I think this is what you're referring to. There are: - i965 (aka Intel VAAPI Driver), which supports anything from Westmere (Gen 5) to Coffee Lake (Gen 9.5) - iHD (aka Intel Media Driver), is a newer one, which supports anything from Broadwell (Gen 8) - libvpl, an even newer one, which supports anything from Tiger Lake (Gen 12) and up Battlemage users had to use libvpl until recently because Media Driver 2024Q4 with BMG support was only released 2 weeks ago. Using libvpl with ffmpeg may requires rebuilding ffmpeg, as some distro doesn't have it enabled (due to conflict with legacy Intel Media SDK, so you have to choose). I have B580 for my Linux machine (6.12), and xe seems pretty stable/performant so far.
  - nullify88 2y ago
    I am always confused about which drivers need installing to fully enable all hardware acceleration features on Broadwell. Also not all distros maintain the drivers equally resulting in mismatches between the vaapi driver or some other driver.
    - sirn 2y ago
      My rough mental Intel driver matrix is something like this (might not be entirely correct): iGPU: | Arch | KMD | DRI (Mesa) | Vulkan (Mesa) | VA | | -------------------------------------------- | ------- | ----------- | -------------- | ---------- | | < Broadwater (Gen4) | i915 | i915 | N/A | N/A | | >= Broadwater (Gen4), < Westmere | i915 | i915 | N/A | i965 | | >= Westmere (Gen5), < Haswell | i915 | crocus | N/A | i965 | | >= Haswell (Gen7), < Broadwell | i915 | crocus | hasvk | i965 | | == Broadwell (Gen8) | i915 | iris/crocus | anv/hasvk | iHD | | >= Skylake (Gen9), < Tiger Lake | i915 | iris | anv | iHD | | >= Tiger Lake (Xe/Gen12), < Lunar Lake (Xe2) | i915/xe | iris | anv | iHD/libvpl | | >= Lunar Lake (Xe2) | xe | iris | anv | iHD/libvpl | dGPU: | Arch | KMD | DRI (Mesa) | Vulkan (Mesa) | VA | | ------------------------------------- | ------- | ----------- | -------------- | ---------- | | >= DG1 (Xe/Gen12.1), Battlemage (Xe2) | i915/xe | iris | anv | iHD/libvpl | | >= Battlemage (Xe2) | xe | iris | anv | iHD/libvpl | Usually, KMD/DRI/Vulkan should work as-is if you use a reasonably recent kernel and mesa, but video acceleration sure is a bit of a mess.
elabajaba 2y ago
Intel GPU drivers have always been terrible. There's so many features that are just broken if you try to actually use them, on top of just generally being extremely slow. Hell, the B580 is CPU bottlenecked on everything that isn't a 7800x3d or 9800x3d which is insane for a low-midrange GPU.

jorvi 2y ago

Intel switched over to a new driver for dGPUs and any iGPU newer than Skylake(?). The newest beta-ish driver is Xe, the main driver is Intel HD, and the old driver is i915. People complaining experienced the teething issues of early Xe builds.

sirn 2y ago
i915 is still the main kernel mode driver on Linux for every Intel GPUs up to Alchemist. xe kmd is used by Battlemage by default (as of 6.12). There's a Mesa DRI driver, called i965 (originally made for Broadwater chipset, thus the 965 numbering), which has since been replaced by either: - Crocus for anything up to Broadwell (Gen 8) - Iris for anything from Broadwell and newer Then there's a Video Acceleration driver, which is (also) called i965. I think this is what you're referring to. There are: - i965 (aka Intel VAAPI Driver), which supports anything from Westmere (Gen 5) to Coffee Lake (Gen 9.5) - iHD (aka Intel Media Driver), is a newer one, which supports anything from Broadwell (Gen 8) - libvpl, an even newer one, which supports anything from Tiger Lake (Gen 12) and up Battlemage users had to use libvpl until recently because Media Driver 2024Q4 with BMG support was only released 2 weeks ago. Using libvpl with ffmpeg may requires rebuilding ffmpeg, as some distro doesn't have it enabled (due to conflict with legacy Intel Media SDK, so you have to choose). I have B580 for my Linux machine (6.12), and xe seems pretty stable/performant so far.
- nullify88 2y ago
  I am always confused about which drivers need installing to fully enable all hardware acceleration features on Broadwell. Also not all distros maintain the drivers equally resulting in mismatches between the vaapi driver or some other driver.
  - sirn 2y ago
    My rough mental Intel driver matrix is something like this (might not be entirely correct): iGPU: | Arch | KMD | DRI (Mesa) | Vulkan (Mesa) | VA | | -------------------------------------------- | ------- | ----------- | -------------- | ---------- | | < Broadwater (Gen4) | i915 | i915 | N/A | N/A | | >= Broadwater (Gen4), < Westmere | i915 | i915 | N/A | i965 | | >= Westmere (Gen5), < Haswell | i915 | crocus | N/A | i965 | | >= Haswell (Gen7), < Broadwell | i915 | crocus | hasvk | i965 | | == Broadwell (Gen8) | i915 | iris/crocus | anv/hasvk | iHD | | >= Skylake (Gen9), < Tiger Lake | i915 | iris | anv | iHD | | >= Tiger Lake (Xe/Gen12), < Lunar Lake (Xe2) | i915/xe | iris | anv | iHD/libvpl | | >= Lunar Lake (Xe2) | xe | iris | anv | iHD/libvpl | dGPU: | Arch | KMD | DRI (Mesa) | Vulkan (Mesa) | VA | | ------------------------------------- | ------- | ----------- | -------------- | ---------- | | >= DG1 (Xe/Gen12.1), Battlemage (Xe2) | i915/xe | iris | anv | iHD/libvpl | | >= Battlemage (Xe2) | xe | iris | anv | iHD/libvpl | Usually, KMD/DRI/Vulkan should work as-is if you use a reasonably recent kernel and mesa, but video acceleration sure is a bit of a mess.

elabajaba 2y ago

Intel GPU drivers have always been terrible. There's so many features that are just broken if you try to actually use them, on top of just generally being extremely slow. Hell, the B580 is CPU bottlenecked on everything that isn't a 7800x3d or 9800x3d which is insane for a low-midrange GPU.