Re: [Trisquel-users] Desktop PC with freedom support

[magicbanana]

This 10-day old article reports the performances of the Intel HD 3000  
Graphics (integrated in the Intel Core i5 2500K). It benchmarks 3D Games on  
the Ubuntu 10.10 system (on which Trisquel Slaine is based) but with the  
latest kernel, Xorg, Intel driver and Mesa...

... and the results are very nice and the conclusion is quite depressing for  
the state of Free 3D drivers on GNU/Linux:
"This phenomenon though is not limited to just the new Sandy Bridge / Core i5  
2500K hardware, but previous generations of Intel hardware and all of the  
Mesa / Gallium3D drivers. (..) Like the Intel Mesa driver, the performance of  
the open-source AMD/ATI and NVIDIA (via the Nouveau project) Mesa/Gallium3D  
drivers are no match to the proprietary drivers. With AMD and NVIDIA, the  
customer at least has a choice of whether they want to use an open-source but  
feature-lacking driver or a high-performance proprietary driver that is of  
similar quality across supported platforms. At the end of the day, the Intel  
Sandy Bridge "HD 3000 graphics" as found on the Core i5 2500K is a huge step  
forward in terms of performance compared to earlier generations of Intel  
integrated graphics. As said last week, its fast and comparable to other Mesa  
/ Gallium3D drivers with discrete hardware. (...) Over time, we will ideally  
see Intel's Mesa performance close in on the Windows driver performance, but  
do not expect to see this in the near-term."