When It Works, Intel Core i5 2500K Graphics On Linux Are Fast!

"After a month of headaches for Intel and myself, there are now Sandy Bridge graphics benchmark results from the Intel Core i5 2500K under Linux to finally publish. Sandy Bridge was a tough launch for Intel in terms of the Linux coverage with the media having problems building a working driver stack and then when I finally got my hands on a CPU, I ran into an entirely different set of show-stopping problems. The developers still have not solved the biggest original issue yet, but Intel sent out a new motherboard and another CPU and it happens to "just work" nicely under Linux. When using the latest bits of their open-source Intel Linux graphics code, the performance on the Core i5 2500K is actually quite impressive compared to other open-source Linux drivers.

"First, to recap the important milestones in the Sandy Bridge Linux saga to date, before sharing these much anticipated results:

"- It was in February of 2010 that I reported Intel has started work on Linux graphics driver support for Sandy Bridge. Not only were they starting on the support 11 months in advance, but even the source code was available from the start and not keeping it in an internal repository until the kernel DRM, DDX, and Mesa support was ready."

Complete Story

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