[Intel-gfx] GMA 950 Intel 945G gallium driver

[Emam Hossain]

Hello Everyone,

Recently I have tested one of my old desktop which got Intel 945G on a Dual
Core CPU. I have installed Ubuntu 11.10 with XServer 1.11, kernel 3.2 and
xf86-video-intel 2.18.

What I have found that Gallium driver i915g from Mesa 7.11 and 8 is
performing better than officially supported DRI i915 driver.

For example, when tested against the following games:

BEEP, http://www.desura.com/games/beep (gallium plays fine while dri not)
BIT.TRIP.RUNNER from humble bundle,
http://bittripgame.com/bittrip-runner.html  (gallium smooth gameplay, dri
slow)
and many more.

Moreover, Windows games with WINE are not playable at all or broken with
DRI driver while runs good with gallium. For example with games:

Need for Speed Underground
Flatout 1
Need for Speed Most Wanted

gallium does the job while DRI does not.

So, my question is why dont support gallium driver when it is performing
better than DRI driver. why not make gallium driver better since Intel 945G
does not have hardware support for many features, DRI driver is just slow
for modern games except GL 1.1 games while gallium driver making use of CPU
to perform those missing hardware features and making games at least run.
Moreover, Windows driver does similar approach like gallium 3D.

Best Regards,
Emam Hossain
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