Arch linux intel graphics

Hardware video acceleration

Hardware video acceleration makes it possible for the video card to decode/encode video, thus offloading the CPU and saving power.

There are several ways to achieve this on Linux:

• Video Acceleration API (VA-API) is a specification and open source library to provide both hardware accelerated video encoding and decoding, developed by Intel.
• Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) is an open source library and API to offload portions of the video decoding process and video post-processing to the GPU video-hardware, developed by NVIDIA.
• NVDECODE/NVENCODE — NVIDIA’s proprietary APIs for hardware video acceleration, used by NVIDIA GPUs from Fermi onwards.

For pre-2007 video cards see XvMC. For comprehensive overview of driver and application support see #Comparison tables.

Contents

Installation

Intel

Intel graphics open-source drivers support VA-API:

• HD Graphics series starting from Broadwell(2014) and newer are supported by intel-media-driver .
• GMA 4500 (2008) and newer GPUs, including HD Graphics up to Coffee Lake (2017) are supported by libva-intel-driver .
• GMA 4500 H.264 decoding is supported by libva-intel-driver-g45-h264AUR , see Intel#Hardware accelerated H.264 decoding on GMA 4500.
• Haswell refresh to Skylake VP9 decoding and Broadwell to Skylake hybrid VP8 encoding is supported by intel-hybrid-codec-driverAUR .
• Skylake or later also need linux-firmware .

NVIDIA

Nouveau open-source driver supports both VA-API and VDPAU:

• GeForce 8 series and newer GPUs up until GeForce GTX 750 are supported by libva-mesa-driver and mesa-vdpau .
• Requiresnouveau-fwAUR firmware package, presently extracted from the NVIDIA binary driver.

NVIDIA proprietary driver supports via nvidia-utils :

• VDPAU on GeForce 8 series and newer GPUs;
• NVDECODE on Fermi and newer GPUs [1];
• NVENCODE on Kepler and newer GPUs.

ATI/AMD

ATI and AMDGPU open-source drivers support both VA-API and VDPAU:

• VA-API on Radeon HD 2000 and newer GPUs is supported by libva-mesa-driver .
• VDPAU on Radeon R300 and newer GPUs is supported by mesa-vdpau .

AMDGPU PRO proprietary driver is built on top of AMDGPU driver and supports both VA-API and VDPAU.

Translation layers

• libva-vdpau-driver — A VDPAU-based backend for VA-API.

https://cgit.freedesktop.org/vaapi/vdpau-driver || libva-vdpau-driver , libva-vdpau-driver-chromiumAUR , libva-vdpau-driver-vp9-gitAUR

• libvdpau-va-gl — VDPAU driver with OpenGL/VAAPI backend. H.264 only.

https://github.com/i-rinat/libvdpau-va-gl || libvdpau-va-gl

Verification

Your system may work perfectly out-of-the-box without needing any configuration. Therefore it is a good idea to start with this section to see that it is the case.

Verifying VA-API

Verify the settings for VA-API by running vainfo , which is provided by libva-utils :

VAEntrypointVLD means that your card is capable to decode this format, VAEntrypointEncSlice means that you can encode to this format.

In this example the i965 driver is used, as you can see in this line:

If the following error is displayed when running vainfo :

You need to configure the correct driver, see #Configuring VA-API.

Verifying VDPAU

Install vdpauinfo to verify if the VDPAU driver is loaded correctly and retrieve a full report of the configuration:

Configuration

Although the video driver should automatically enable hardware video acceleration support for both VA-API and VDPAU, it may be needed to configure VA-API/VDPAU manually. Only continue to this section if you went through #Verification.

The default driver names, used if there is no other configuration present, are guess by the system. However, they are often hacked together and may not work. You can see the guessed values by running:

In this case radeonsi is the default for both VA-API and VDPAU.

This does not represent the configuration however. The values above will not change even if you override them.

Configuring VA-API

You can override the driver for VA-API by using the LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME environment variable:

Configuring VDPAU

You can override the driver for VDPAU by using the VDPAU_DRIVER environment variable.

The correct driver name depends on your setup:

• For Intel graphics you need to set it to va_gl .
• For the open source AMD driver set it to the proper driver version depending on your GPU, see #Verification.
• For the open source Nouveau driver set it to nouveau .
• For NVIDIA’s proprietary version set it to nvidia .

Configuring applications

Troubleshooting

Failed to open VDPAU backend

You need to set VDPAU_DRIVER variable to point to correct driver. See #Configuring VDPAU.

VAAPI init failed

An error along the lines of libva: /usr/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so init failed is encountered. This can happen because of improper detection of Wayland. One solution is to unset $DISPLAY so that mpv, MPlayer, VLC, etc. do not assume it is X11. Another mpv-specific solution is to add the parameter —gpu-context=wayland .

Video decoding corruption or distortion with AMDGPU driver

When experiencing video decoding corruption or distortion with AMDGPU driver, set allow_rgb10_configs=false as environment variable or driconf . [3]

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Intel graphics

Since Intel provides and supports open source drivers, Intel graphics are essentially plug-and-play.

For a comprehensive list of Intel GPU models and corresponding chipsets and CPUs, see Wikipedia:List of Intel graphics processing units.

Contents

Installation

Install the mesa package, which provides the DRI driver for 3D acceleration.

• For 32-bit application support, also install the lib32-mesa package from the multilib repository.
• For the DDX driver (which provides 2D acceleration in Xorg), install the xf86-video-intel package. (Often not recommended, see note below.)
• For Vulkan support (Ivy Bridge and newer), install the vulkan-intel package.

Loading

The Intel kernel module should load fine automatically on system boot.

If it does not happen, then:

• Make sure you do not have nomodeset or vga= as a kernel parameter, since Intel requires kernel mode-setting.
• Also, check that you have not disabled Intel by using any modprobe blacklisting within /etc/modprobe.d/ or /usr/lib/modprobe.d/ .

Enable early KMS

Kernel mode setting (KMS) is supported by Intel chipsets that use the i915 DRM driver and is mandatory and enabled by default.

Refer to Kernel mode setting#Early KMS start for instructions on how to enable KMS as soon as possible at the boot process.

Enable GuC / HuC firmware loading

On supported Skylake and newer processors, some video features (e.g. CBR rate control on SKL low-power encoding mode) may require the use of an updated GPU firmware,[3] which is loaded by default only on Gen 11+ hardware since Linux 5.4.[4] Enabling GuC/HuC firmware loading can cause issues on some systems; disable it if you experience freezing (for example, after resuming from hibernation).

For processors before Gen 11, it is necessary to add i915.enable_guc=2 to the kernel parameters to enable both GuC and HuC firmware loading. Alternatively, if the initramfs already includes the i915 module (see Kernel mode setting#Early KMS start), you can set these options through a file in /etc/modprobe.d/ , e.g.:

On next boot you can verify both GuC and HuC are enabled by using dmesg:

If they are not supported by your graphics adapter you will see:

Alternatively, check using:

Note that the related warning is not fatal, as explained in [5]:

Xorg configuration

There may be no need for any configuration to run Xorg.

However, if Xorg does not start, and to take advantage of some driver options, you can create an Xorg configuration file similar to the one below:

Additional options are added by the user on new lines below Driver . For the full list of options, see the intel(4) man page.

AccelMethod

You may need to indicate Option «AccelMethod» when creating a configuration file, the classical options are UXA , SNA (default) and BLT .

If you experience issues with default SNA (e.g. pixelated graphics, corrupt text, etc.), try using UXA instead, which can be done by adding the following line to your configuration file:

Module-based options

The i915 kernel module allows for configuration via module options. Some of the module options impact power saving.

A list of all options along with short descriptions and default values can be generated with the following command:

To check which options are currently enabled, run

You will note that many options default to -1, resulting in per-chip powersaving defaults. It is however possible to configure more aggressive powersaving by using module options.

Framebuffer compression (enable_fbc)

Making use of Framebuffer compression (FBC) can reduce power consumption while reducing memory bandwidth needed for screen refreshes.

To enable FBC, use i915.enable_fbc=1 as kernel parameter or set in /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf :

Enabling frame buffer compression on pre-Sandy Bridge CPUs results in endless error messages:

The solution is to disable frame buffer compression which will imperceptibly increase power consumption (around 0.06 W). In order to disable it add i915.enable_fbc=0 to the kernel line parameters. More information on the results of disabled compression can be found here.

Fastboot

The goal of Intel Fastboot is to preserve the frame-buffer as setup by the BIOS or bootloader to avoid any flickering until Xorg has started.[9][10]

To force enable fastboot on platforms where it is not the default already, set i915.fastboot=1 as kernel parameter or set in /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf :

Intel GVT-g graphics virtualization support

See Intel GVT-g for details.

Tips and tricks

Setting scaling mode

This can be useful for some full screen applications:

where param can be:

• center : resolution will be kept exactly as defined, no scaling will be made,
• full : scale the resolution so it uses the entire screen or
• full_aspect : scale the resolution to the maximum possible but keep the aspect ratio.

If it does not work, try:

where param is one of «Full» , «Center» or «Full aspect» .

Hardware accelerated H.264 decoding on GMA 4500

The libva-intel-driver package only provides hardware accelerated MPEG-2 decoding for GMA 4500 series GPUs. The H.264 decoding support is maintained in a separated g45-h264 branch, which can be used by installing libva-intel-driver-g45-h264 AUR package. Note, however, that this support is experimental and its development has been abandoned. Using the VA-API with this driver on a GMA 4500 series GPU will offload the CPU but may not result in as smooth a playback as non-accelerated playback. Tests using mplayer showed that using vaapi to play back an H.264 encoded 1080p video halved the CPU load (compared to the XV overlay) but resulted in very choppy playback, while 720p worked reasonably well [12]. This is echoed by other experiences [13]. Setting the preallocated video ram size higher in BIOS results in much better hardware decoded playback. Even 1080p h264 works well if this is done. Smooth playback (1080p/720p) works also with mpv-git AUR in combination with ffmpeg-git AUR and libva-intel-driver-g45-h264 AUR . With MPV and the Firefox plugin «Send to MPV player»[14] it is possible to watch hardware accelerated YouTube videos.

Old OpenGL Driver (i965)

As of Mesa 19.2, a new OpenGL driver, Iris, is available for testing. In Mesa 20.0, the Iris driver is promoted to be the default for Gen8+. Certain applications run faster with it. You may disable it and revert to use the old i965 driver by setting the MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=i965 environment variable before starting any OpenGL application. This setting does not affect Vulkan applications.

Overriding reported OpenGL version

The MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE environment variable can be used to override the reported OpenGL version to any application. For example, setting MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.5 will report OpenGL 4.5.

Setting brightness and gamma

Troubleshooting

Tearing

The SNA acceleration method causes tearing on some machines. To fix this, enable the TearFree option in the driver by adding the following line to your configuration file:

See the original bug report for more info.

Disable Vertical Synchronization (VSYNC)

• Chomium/Chrome has lags and slow performance due to GPU and runs smoothly with —disable-gpu switch
• glxgears test does not show desired performance

The intel-driver uses Triple Buffering for vertical synchronization; this allows for full performance and avoids tearing. To turn vertical synchronization off (e.g. for benchmarking) use this .drirc in your home directory:

DRI3 issues

DRI3 is the default DRI version in xf86-video-intel . On some systems this can cause issues such as this. To switch back to DRI2 add the following line to your configuration file:

For the modesetting driver, this method of disabling DRI3 does not work. Instead, one can set the environment variable LIBGL_DRI3_DISABLE=1 .

Font and screen corruption in GTK applications (missing glyphs after suspend/resume)

Should you experience missing font glyphs in GTK applications, the following workaround might help. Edit /etc/environment to add the following line:

Blank screen during boot, when «Loading modules»

If using «late start» KMS and the screen goes blank when «Loading modules», it may help to add i915 and intel_agp to the initramfs. See Kernel mode setting#Early KMS start section.

Alternatively, appending the following kernel parameter seems to work as well:

If you need to output to VGA then try this:

X freeze/crash with intel driver

Some issues with X crashing, GPU hanging, or problems with X freezing, can be fixed by disabling the GPU usage with the NoAccel option — add the following lines to your configuration file:

Alternatively, try to disable the 3D acceleration only with the DRI option:

Baytrail complete freeze

If you are using kernel > 3.16 on Baytrail architecture and randomly encounter total system freezes, the following kernel option is a workaround until this bug is fixed in the linux kernel.

This is originally an Intel CPU bug that can be triggered by certain c-state transitions. It can also happen with Linux kernel 3.16 or Windows, though apparently much more rarely. The kernel option will prevent the freeze by avoiding c-state transitions but will also increase power consumption.

Adding undetected resolutions

This issue is covered on the Xrandr page.

Backlight is not adjustable

If after resuming from suspend, the hotkeys for changing the screen brightness do not take effect, check your configuration against the Backlight article.

If the problem persists, try one of the following kernel parameters:

Also make sure you are not using fastboot mode (i915.fastboot kernel parameter), it is known for breaking backlight controls.

Corruption or unresponsiveness in Chromium and Firefox

If you experience corruption, unresponsiveness, lags or slow performance in Chromium and/or Firefox some possible solutions are:

Kernel crashing w/kernels 4.0+ on Broadwell/Core-M chips

A few seconds after X/Wayland loads the machine will freeze and journalctl will log a kernel crash referencing the Intel graphics as below:

This can be fixed by disabling execlist support which was changed to default on with kernel 4.0. Add the following kernel parameter:

This is known to be broken to at least kernel 4.0.5.

Lag in Windows guests

The video output of a Windows guest in VirtualBox sometimes hangs until the host forces a screen update (e.g. by moving the mouse cursor). Removing the enable_fbc=1 option fixes this issue.

Screen flickering

Panel Self Refresh (PSR), a power saving feature used by Intel iGPUs is known to cause flickering in some instances FS#49628 FS#49371 FS#50605. A temporary solution is to disable this feature using the kernel parameter i915.enable_psr=0 .

OpenGL 2.1 with i915 driver

The update of mesa from version 13.x to 17 may break support for OpenGL 2.1 on third gen Intel GPUs (GMA3100, see here), as described in this article, reverting it back to OpenGL 1.4. However this could be restored manually by setting /etc/drirc or

/.drirc options like:

KMS Issue: console is limited to small area

One of the low-resolution video ports may be enabled on boot which is causing the terminal to utilize a small area of the screen. To fix, explicitly disable the port with an i915 module setting with video=SVIDEO-1:d in the kernel command line parameter in the bootloader. See Kernel parameters for more info.

If that does not work, try disabling TV1 or VGA1 instead of SVIDEO-1. Video port names can be listed with xrandr.

Weathered colors (color range problems)

The «Broadcast RGB» property in the Intel driver defines the color range which can be used by the display — either «Limited 16:235» (which limits the color range for some displays that cannot properly process full range color signals) and «Full». Since kernel 3.9, the new default property «Automatic» tries to determine whenever the display supports the full color range, and if it does not/detection fails, color range falls back to «Limited 16:235». If detections faulty falls back to limited color range, it results in weathered colors and grey blacks. On some displays/connectors, despite the full color range being supported properly, automatic detection fails and falls back to the limited color range (upstream bug report, kernels 4.18-4.20).

You can forcefully set the desired color range by running xrandr —output —set «Broadcast RGB» «Full» (replace with the appropriate output device, listed by running xrandr ). There is no way to persist this setting in xorg.conf .

No sound through HDMI on a Haswell CPU

According to a Linux kernel issue, sound will not be output through HDMI if intel_iommu=on . To fix this problem, use the following kernel parameter:

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