Recommended modesetting driver for Intel graphic cards

Mon Nov 20 22:40:38 GMT 2017

On Montag, 20. November 2017 17:28:06 CET Martin Flöser wrote:
> Am 2017-11-20 11:59, schrieb Milian Wolff:
> > On Samstag, 18. November 2017 15:34:16 CET Friedrich W. H. Kossebau
> > 
> > wrote:
> >> Am Donnerstag, 16. November 2017, 23:24:52 CET schrieb Ingo Klöcker:
> >> > On Dienstag, 7. November 2017 20:55:57 CET Martin Flöser wrote:
> >> > > Am 2017-11-07 20:08, schrieb Martin Koller:
> >> > > >> Are you aware that KWin uses QtQuick for all its UI elements, such
> >> > > >> as
> >> > > >> Alt+TAB?
> >> > > > 
> >> > > > I have deactivated the compositor since sadly it simply does not
> >> > > > work
> >> > > > on my laptop (the intel graphics driver just freezes the whole
> >> > > > machine).
> >> > > 
> >> > > I did not talk about compositor, I talked about QtQuick! Yes, KWin
> >> > > uses
> >> > > QtQuick for rendering it's UI, that is unrelated to compositing.
> >> > > 
> >> > > Now you mention that your intel graphics driver freezes the whole
> >> > > system. I'm using Intel on all my systems and it's the most used
> >> > > driver
> >> > > out there. We get many, many, many bug reports in KWin about issues.
> >> > > Freezing systems has not been in the list for now something like two
> >> > > years.
> >> > > 
> >> > > Given that I am very certain that you have a hardware issue where
> >> > > people
> >> > > can help you with. Intel GPUs are good enough to run the Plasma
> >> > > session
> >> > > without any negative impact.
> >> > > 
> >> > > So let us help you fix your issues that you can enjoy our work
> >> > > without
> >> > > having to spend time on writing your own shell.
> >> > > 
> >> > > First thing: are you using the xorg-modesettings driver? If not:
> >> > > install
> >> > > it, problems solved. Do not (I repeat) do not use the xorg-intel
> >> > > driver.
> >> > > 
> >> > > For kernel I recommend at least version 4.13 as this comes with the
> >> > > atomic modesettings driver stack enabled by default. If you do not
> >> > > have
> >> > > such a kernel version yet I highly recommend to give it a try.
> >> > 
> >> > Martin, thanks a lot for your advice!
> >> > 
> >> > I've suffered from freezes since I updated my openSUSE 13.2 to
> >> > Tumbleweed
> >> > some time ago (and much longer on my laptop where I've switched to Leap
> >> > and
> >> > later Tumbleweed much earlier).
> >> 
> >> Same here, happy to finally see someone with correlated experience. I
> >> never
> >> got any useful hints in the log files, so was close to consider my
> >> hardware
> >> broken. Strange enough all freezes seemed to happen while moving the
> >> mouse
> >> though, which kept the hope alive it was something software-related.
> >> 
> >> Curious to see if my daily freeze will now be a thing of the past now
> >> that I
> >> changed the driver. Though I am on a 2nd gen 915 device, while all the
> >> modesettings driver talk I came across on a quick search seemed to be
> >> only
> >> about gen4 and later? No issues seen for one hour so far, hope grows
> >> 
> >> :)
> >> :
> >> > The switch to the modesetting driver seems
> >> > to have fixed those issues. It took me some time to find out how to
> >> > enable
> >> > the modesetting driver. To save others the time here's how to do it:
> >> > Write
> >> > #=====
> >> > Section "Device"
> >> > 
> >> >    Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
> >> >    Driver      "modesetting"
> >> > 
> >> > EndSection
> >> > #=====
> >> > to a file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/, e.g. 50-device.conf. Make sure that
> >> > this is the only (or at least the first) "Device" section in any of the
> >> > files in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/.
> >> 
> >> Another approach seems to be to uninstall xf86-video-intel, that way
> >> the
> >> seemingly hardcoded driver-auto-match logic will skip forward to the
> >> modesetting driver:
> >> 
> >> [    12.125] (==) Matched intel as autoconfigured driver 0
> >> [    12.125] (==) Matched intel as autoconfigured driver 1
> >> [    12.125] (==) Matched modesetting as autoconfigured driver 2
> >> [    12.125] (==) Matched fbdev as autoconfigured driver 3
> >> [    12.125] (==) Matched vesa as autoconfigured driver 4
> >> [    12.125] (==) Assigned the driver to the xf86ConfigLayout
> >> [    12.125] (II) LoadModule: "intel"
> >> [    12.127] (WW) Warning, couldn't open module intel
> >> [    12.127] (II) UnloadModule: "intel"
> >> [    12.127] (II) Unloading intel
> >> [    12.127] (EE) Failed to load module "intel" (module does not
> >> exist, 0)
> >> [    12.127] (II) LoadModule: "modesetting"
> >> [    12.127] (II) Loading
> >> /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/modesetting_drv.so
> > 
> > I've also recently come across this. According to [1] the performance
> > is
> > supposedly much worse. Is this still true for more recent mesa/kernel
> > versions?
> 
> You quoted Phoronix. I hope you don't expect Phoronix to be able to get
> proper measurements. That's something Phoronix still hasn't succeeded
> after all those years. Just for fun I clicked that link and the first
> graph shows a benchmark showing a game one running at 22.15, the other
> at 22.13 fps. This difference is kernel sneezing. So much to that. But
> the real issue is that a game running at 22 fps is unplayable. It has
> nothing to do in the benchmark, the setup is broken. This has been the
> issue as long as I followed Phoronix benchmarking. From an academic
> point of view - which you understand as much as I do - it's just all
> extremely horrible.
> 
> Don't take any numbers serious. Michael doesn't understand how to do
> benchmarking. He just runs his tools. He doesn't think about what a
> benchmark should show, what he wants to show. And he doesn't interpret
> the numbers. He just gives numbers. Do they matter? Who knows. You
> derived from his numbers that the "performance is much worse". Is that
> the case? I don't know because I don't see this in the benchmark. I just
> see numbers. We would have to ask someone understanding the system
> whether it makes sense. I assume there are not many people who might be
> able to answer the question. Maybe the authors of GtkPerf, maybe Keith
> Packard as the author of glamor, but certainly not Michael from
> Phoronix.
> 
> Hadn't done a Phoronix benchmarking rant for years ;-) Sad that it still
> is needed.
> 
> For reference I point to a blog post from 2012 where I discuss Phoronix
> benchmarking in detail:
> http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2012/09/why-i-dont-like-game-rendering
> -performance-benchmarks/
> 
> Everything written there still fully applies to the benchmark in
> question

Thanks for the rant :) I rarely look at graphic related Phoronix stuff since I 
don't know the tools and what they measure. For some I/O and CPU stuff, the 
tools are useful and thus the numbers reported are, too.

So since the tools used here are apparently useless, could you or someone else 
please answer the actual question: Is there any perceived performance 
difference between modesetting driver and intel driver? I assume it isn't from 
the way you respond. Just wanted to make sure.

Thanks

-- 
Milian Wolff
mail at milianw.de
http://milianw.de
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