No hardware acceleration out-of-the-box with Intel HD GPU

[teo1978]

I don't know whether I am reporting this against the right package.

I have an acer laptop with these GPUs:
- GPU0: Intel HD Graphics 4000 (M)
- GPU1: NVIDIA GeForce GT 710M

with Optimus technology. I know getting the NVidia card to work is as complicated as hell, so I gave up on that.

However, I expect the Intel GPU to work at its full potential out of the box.

Instead, I ran several benchmark test tools and they perform very poorly, indicating that everything is being rendered by software.
On moderately complex 3D graphics tests I get frame rates around 18fps, while on the most trivial tests (like a rotating horse with no texture whatsoever) I get 60fps at most.

By googling around I've found some how-to's for getting hardware acceleration to work, but they are either unclear or incomplete or they contraddict one another, and none of them is official.

I shouldn't be supposed to do perform complicated installations and configurations. Support for all the available hardware acceleration power, at least on the integrated GPU, should work right out of the box.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.04
Package: mesa-vdpau-drivers (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.19.0-25.26-generic 3.19.8-ckt2
Uname: Linux 3.19.0-25-generic x86_64
.tmp.unity.support.test.0:

ApportVersion: 2.17.2-0ubuntu1.2
Architecture: amd64
CompizPlugins: No value set for `/apps/compiz-1/general/screen0/options/active_plugins'
CompositorRunning: compiz
CompositorUnredirectDriverBlacklist: '(nouveau|Intel).*Mesa 8.0'
CompositorUnredirectFSW: true
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Sat Aug 15 22:33:33 2015
DistUpgraded: 2015-08-15 21:46:56,607 DEBUG enabling apt cron job
DistroCodename: vivid
DistroVariant: ubuntu
DkmsStatus:
 vboxhost, 4.3.14, 3.13.0-61-generic, x86_64: installed
 vboxhost, 4.3.14, 3.16.0-44-generic, x86_64: installed
ExtraDebuggingInterest: Yes, if not too technical
GraphicsCard:
 Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0166] (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
   Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0647]
 NVIDIA Corporation GF117M [GeForce 610M/710M/820M / GT 620M/625M/630M/720M] [10de:1140] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
   Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] GeForce 710M [1025:0691]
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-10-11 (673 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Release amd64 (20130424)
MachineType: Acer Aspire V3-571G
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.19.0-25-generic.efi.signed root=UUID=5830b30e-69e8-4bb4-8a2b-bc2b43c7414a ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: mesa
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to vivid on 2015-08-15 (0 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 10/15/2012
dmi.bios.vendor: Acer
dmi.bios.version: V2.07
dmi.board.asset.tag: Type2 - Board Asset Tag
dmi.board.name: VA50_HC_CR
dmi.board.vendor: Acer
dmi.board.version: Type2 - Board Version
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: Acer
dmi.chassis.version: V2.07
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAcer:bvrV2.07:bd10/15/2012:svnAcer:pnAspireV3-571G:pvrV2.07:rvnAcer:rnVA50_HC_CR:rvrType2-BoardVersion:cvnAcer:ct10:cvrV2.07:
dmi.product.name: Aspire V3-571G
dmi.product.version: V2.07
dmi.sys.vendor: Acer
version.compiz: compiz 1:0.9.12.1+15.04.20150410.1-0ubuntu1
version.ia32-libs: ia32-libs N/A
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.60-2
version.libgl1-mesa-dri: libgl1-mesa-dri 10.5.2-0ubuntu1
version.libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental: libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental N/A
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 10.5.2-0ubuntu1
version.xserver-xorg-core: xserver-xorg-core 2:1.17.1-0ubuntu3
version.xserver-xorg-input-evdev: xserver-xorg-input-evdev 1:2.9.0-1ubuntu2
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:7.5.0-1ubuntu2
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.99.917-1~exp1ubuntu2.2
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:1.0.11-1ubuntu2build1
xserver.bootTime: Sat Aug 15 21:48:00 2015
xserver.configfile: default
xserver.errors:

xserver.logfile: /var/log/Xorg.0.log
xserver.outputs:
 product id 9170
 vendor ACI
xserver.version: 2:1.17.1-0ubuntu3

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

OpenGL vendor string: Intel Open Source Technology Center
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Ivybridge Mobile
OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 10.5.2

Not software rendered: [32;01myes[00m
Not blacklisted: [32;01myes[00m
GLX fbconfig: [32;01myes[00m
GLX texture from pixmap: [32;01myes[00m
GL npot or rect textures: [32;01myes[00m
GL vertex program: [32;01myes[00m
GL fragment program: [32;01myes[00m
GL vertex buffer object: [32;01myes[00m
GL framebuffer object: [32;01myes[00m
GL version is 1.4+: [32;01myes[00m

Unity 3D supported: [32;01myes[00m

everything is fine, your mobile CPU doesn't come with a powerful GPU anyway. And 60fps is what your panel refresh rate is.

[teo1978 (teo8976)]

It may not ve very powerful but it's definitely more powerful than that.

Look at this:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-4000-Benchmarked.73567.0.html

On Windows, they get around 30-40 fps with several videogames which render much complex scenes than the ones that yield me 18 or less.

> And 60fps is what your panel refresh rate is.

I don't get why that should be a limit. There's a GpuTest tool that renders a single big triangle, and this gets around 1000 fps. By the way, it consumes 50% cpu (i.e. one full core), showing that it's not using any hardware acceleration, and that's rendering one triangle.

> Not software rendered: [32;01myes[00m
> Not blacklisted: [32;01myes[00m
> ...

Is that reliable? Is there a benchmarking tool that can draw graphics and actually tell me whether all of those feature are being used from the GPU?

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

You need to compare it with previous Ubuntu, not Windows. The driver might not perform as well on Linux, and you can file a bug for it on bugs.freedesktop.org if you like.

but the distro driver still is hardware accelerated and you get the Unity UI -> no bug here.

[teo1978 (teo8976)]

> but the distro driver still is hardware accelerated

That's what I doubt. How can I test and make sure it's not somehow falling back to emulating openGL in CPU?

Doesn't the fact that the triangle test consumes 100% of a cpu core demonstrate that it's using the CPU to perform such a simple task as rendering a triangle?

> and you get the Unity UI

That in itself doesn't prove it's hardware accelerated, does it?