Intel graphics

Related articles
Xorg
Kernel mode setting
Xrandr
Hybrid graphics
Vulkan
General-purpose computing on graphics processing units
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:Intel Graphics Technology
and
Gentoo:Intel#Feature support
.
Note
PowerVR-based graphics (GMA 3600 series) are not supported by open source drivers.
Intel's Gen
N
hardware does not refer to the generation of the CPU, it refers to the
generation of the GPU
, which is different from the generation of the CPU.
See
Graphics processing unit#Installation
to identify your card.
Installation
Install
one of the following packages, which provide the
DRI
driver for 3D acceleration.
mesa
is the up-to-date
Mesa
package which includes the modern Gallium3D drivers for Gen 3 hardware and later. This is the recommended choice.
mesa-amber
is the legacy Mesa package which includes the classic (non-Gallium3D) drivers from Gen 2 to Gen 11 hardware. This driver might have better performance or stability for Gen 7 and older hardware, but is unmaintained.
For 32-bit application support, also install the
lib32-mesa
or
lib32-mesa-amber
package from the
multilib
repository.
For the
DDX
driver which provides 2D acceleration in
Xorg
, use one of the following drivers:
The
modesetting
driver included in the
xorg-server
package is the recommended choice for Gen 3 hardware and later. It uses the DRI driver for acceleration via
glamor
.
The
xf86-video-intel
package provides the legacy intel DDX driver from Gen 2 to Gen 9 hardware. This package is generally not recommended, see note below.
For
Vulkan
support (Broadwell and newer; support for earlier chips is
incomplete or missing
), install the
vulkan-intel
package. For 32-bit
Vulkan
support, install the
lib32-vulkan-intel
package.
Also see
Hardware video acceleration
.
Note
Some (
Debian & Ubuntu
,
Fedora
,
KDE
,
Mozilla
) recommend not installing the
xf86-video-intel
driver, and instead falling back on the modesetting driver. See
[1]
,
[2]
,
Xorg#Installation
, and
modesetting(4)
. However, the modesetting driver can cause problems such as
screen tearing and mouse jittering on XFCE
,
artifacts when switching virtual desktops in Chromium
, and
vsync jitter/video stutter in mpv
.
The
xf86-video-intel
driver does not have proper support for Gen 11 and newer hardware, causing lack of acceleration and rendering issues that make Plasma Desktop almost unusable. See
[3]
.
There have been a couple of reports
[4]
[5]
where the whole graphics stack hard freezes when
xf86-video-intel
is installed, not even switching to a different virtual console works (by pressing
Ctrl+Alt+F
n
), only killing the user processes with
SysRq
works.
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
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/
.
Early KMS
Kernel mode setting
(KMS) is supported by the
i915
and
xe
drivers, and is enabled early since
mkinitcpio
v32, as the
kms
hook
is included by default. For other setups, see
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
Starting with Gen 9 (Skylake and onwards), Intel GPUs include a
Graphics micro (μ) Controller
(GuC) which provides the following functionality:
Offloading some media decoding functionality from the CPU to the
HEVC/H.265 micro (µ) Controller
(HuC). Only applicable if using
intel-media-driver
for
hardware video acceleration
. Introduced with Gen 9.
Using the GuC for scheduling, context submission, and power management. Introduced with Alder Lake-P (Mobile), within Gen 12.
To use this functionality, first ensure that
linux-firmware-intel
is
installed
, as it provides the GuC and HuC firmware files.
Next, the GuC firmware must be loaded. With regards to HuC support, some video features (e.g. CBR rate control on SKL low-power encoding mode) require loading the HuC firmware as well
[6]
.
The
new experimental
xe
driver enables Guc and Huc functionality by default.
For the
i915
driver, GuC functionality is controlled by the
enable_guc
kernel module parameter
. Its usage is as follows:
The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed.
Reason:
Despite Intel's documentation, Tiger Lake and Rocket Lake GPUs may actually support
enable_guc=3
, and have a default of
enable_guc=1
. (Discuss in
Talk:Intel graphics#TGL/RKL GuC Submission
)
enable_guc value
GuC Submission
HuC Firmware Loading
Default for platforms
Supported on platforms
0
No
No
Tiger Lake, Rocket Lake, and pre-Gen 12
[7]
All
1
Yes
No
–
Alder Lake-P (Mobile) and newer
2
No
Yes
Alder Lake-S (Desktop)
[8]
[9]
Gen 9 and newer
3
Yes
Yes
Alder Lake-P (Mobile) and newer
Gen 9.5 and newer (better for some)
If GuC submission or HuC firmware loading is not enabled by default for your GPU, you can manually enable it.
Warning
Manually enabling GuC / HuC firmware loading taints the kernel
even when the feature is not supported
. Moreover, enabling GuC/HuC firmware loading can cause issues on some systems; disable it if you experience freezing (for example, after resuming from hibernation).
Set the
enable_guc=
kernel module parameter
. For example, with:
/etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
options i915 enable_guc=3
Regenerate the initramfs
, on next boot you can verify both GuC and HuC are enabled by using
dmesg
:
# dmesg | grep -i -e 'huc' -e 'guc'
[30130.586970] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] GuC firmware i915/icl_guc_33.0.0.bin version 33.0 submission:disabled
[30130.586973] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] HuC firmware i915/icl_huc_9.0.0.bin version 9.0 authenticated:yes
If they are not supported by your graphics adapter you will see:
# dmesg | grep -i -e 'huc' -e 'guc'
[    0.571339] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] Incompatible option enable_guc=2 - GuC is not supported!
[    0.571340] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] Incompatible option enable_guc=2 - HuC is not supported!
Alternatively, check using:
# less /sys/kernel/debug/dri/*/gt0/uc/guc_info
# less /sys/kernel/debug/dri/*/gt0/uc/huc_info
Note
Using
GVT-g graphics virtualization
by setting
enable_gvt=1
is not supported as of Linux 4.20.11 when GuC/HuC is also enabled. The i915 module would fail to initialize as shown in system journal.
# journalctl
... kernel: [drm:intel_gvt_init [i915]] *ERROR* i915 GVT-g loading failed due to Graphics virtualization is not yet supported with GuC submission
... kernel: i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm:i915_driver_load [i915]] Device initialization failed (-5)
... kernel: i915: probe of 0000:00:02.0 failed with error -5
... kernel: snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1f.3: failed to add i915 component master (-19)
Note that the related warning  is not fatal, as explained in
[10]
:
# journalctl -b
... kernel: i915 0000:00:02.0: Direct firmware load for i915/gvt/vid_0x8086_did_0x5916_rid_0x02.golden_hw_state failed with error -2
Xorg configuration
There is generally no need for any configuration to run
Xorg
.
However, to take advantage of some driver options or if
Xorg
does not start, you can create an Xorg configuration file.
With the modesetting driver
If you have installed
xf86-video-intel
but want to load the modesetting driver explicitly instead of letting the DDX driver take priority, for example when trying to compare them:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf
Section "Device"
  Identifier "Intel Graphics"
  Driver "modesetting"
EndSection
With the Intel driver
Note
The following requires
xf86-video-intel
.
Create an Xorg configuration file similar to the one below:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf
Section "Device"
  Identifier "Intel Graphics"
  Driver "intel"
EndSection
Additional options are added by the user on new lines below
Driver
.
For the full list of options, see the
intel(4)
man page.
Note
You might need to add more device sections than the one listed above. This will be indicated where necessary.
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
:
Option      "AccelMethod"  "uxa"
See the "AccelMethod" option under
intel(4) § CONFIGURATION DETAILS
.
Using Intel DDX driver with recent GPUs
For Intel GPUs starting from Gen 8 (Broadwell), the Iris Mesa driver is needed:
Option      "DRI"  "iris"
Disabling TearFree, TripleBuffer, SwapbuffersWait
If you use a compositor (the default in modern desktop environment like GNOME, KDE Plasma, Xfce, etc.), then TearFree, TripleBuffer and SwapbuffersWait can usually be disabled to improve performance and decrease power consumption.
Option      "TearFree"        "false"
Option      "TripleBuffer"    "false"
Option      "SwapbuffersWait" "false"
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:
$ modinfo -p i915
To check which options are currently enabled, run
# systool -m i915 -av
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
.
Note
Diverting from the defaults will mark the kernel as
tainted
from Linux 3.18 onwards. This basically implies using other options than the per-chip defaults is considered experimental and not supported by the developers.
Framebuffer compression (enable_fbc)
Framebuffer compression (FBC) is a feature that can reduce power consumption and memory bandwidth during screen refreshes.
The feature will be automatically enabled if supported by the hardware. You can use the command below to verify whether it is enabled:
$ modinfo i915 | grep enable_fbc
parm:           enable_fbc:Enable frame buffer compression for power savings (default: -1 (use per-chip default)) (int)
If the parm is set to
-1
, you do not need to do anything. Otherwise, to force-enable FBC, use
i915.enable_fbc=1
as
kernel parameter
or set in
/etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
:
/etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
options i915 enable_fbc=1
Note
Framebuffer compression may be unreliable or unavailable before Gen 6 (Sandy Bridge). Having it enabled results in endless error messages:
[drm] not enough stolen space for compressed buffer (need 4325376 bytes), disabling
[drm] hint: you may be able to increase stolen memory size in the BIOS to avoid this
The solution is to disable frame buffer compression (which will increase power consumption by around 0.06 W) with the
i915.enable_fbc=0
kernel parameter
.
[11]
Fastboot
Note
This parameter is enabled by default for Skylake and newer
[12]
as well as Bay- and Cherry-Trail (VLV/CHV)
[13]
since Linux 5.1
[14]
,
has subsequently been removed completely since Linux 6.7
[15]
, and fastboot has finally been enabled for all GPU generations (including those older than Skylake) since Linux 6.9.
[16]
The goal of Intel Fastboot is to preserve the frame-buffer as setup by the BIOS or
boot loader
to avoid any flickering until
Xorg
has started.
[17]
[18]
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
:
/etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
options i915 fastboot=1
Intel GVT-g graphics virtualization support
See
Intel GVT-g
for details.
Enable performance support
Starting with Gen 6 (Sandy Bridge and onwards), Intel GPUs provide performance counters used for exposing internal performance data to drivers. The drivers and hardware registers refer to this infrastructure as the
Observation Architecture
(internally "OA")
[19]
, but Intel's documentation also more generally refers to this functionality as providing
Observability Performance Counters
[20]
[21]
.
By default, only programs running with the
CAP_SYS_ADMIN
(equivalent to root) or
CAP_PERFMON
capabilities
can utilize the observation architecture
[22]
[23]
. Most applications will be running without either of these, resulting in the following warning:
MESA-INTEL: warning: Performance support disabled, consider sysctl dev.i915.perf_stream_paranoid=0
To enable performance support without using the capabilities (or root), set the kernel parameter as described in
sysctl
.
Warning
The restrictive defaults of the
perf_event_paranoid
family of options exists because there is risk associated with allowing applications to access performance data
[24]
. With this being said,
dev.i915.perf_stream_paranoid
only influences access to GPU performance counters, which carry less risk than e.g. CPU architectural execution context registers.
Tips and tricks
Setting scaling mode
This can be useful for some full screen applications:
$ xrandr --output LVDS1 --set PANEL_FITTING
param
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:
$ xrandr --output LVDS1 --set "scaling mode"
param
where
param
is one of
"Full"
,
"Center"
or
"Full aspect"
.
Note
This option currently does not work for external displays (e.g. VGA, DVI, HDMI, DP).
[25]
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.
Note
You can use this variable to report any known OpenGL version, even if it is not supported by the GPU. Some applications might no longer crash, some may start crashing - you probably do not want to set this variable globally.
Monitoring
See
Hardware video acceleration#Verification
.
Setting brightness and gamma
See
Backlight
.
Testing the new experimental Xe driver
The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed.
Reason:
Setting
i915.force_probe=!9a49
may not work. Using a non existing ID e,g
i915.force_probe=foo
seems to force it correctly. (Discuss in
Talk:Intel graphics#Experimental Xe driver probe overrule not working
)
To try the (experimental)
new Xe driver
, you need:
linux
6.8 or above
Tiger Lake
integrated graphics and newer, or a discrete graphics card.
mesa
.
Note your PCI ID with:
$ lspci -nnd ::03xx
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation TigerLake-LP GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] [8086:
9a49
] (rev 01)
Then add the following to your
Kernel parameters
with the appropriate PCI ID:
... i915.force_probe=!
9a49
xe.force_probe=
9a49
Make sure you have an alternate solution to boot in order to revert if necessary.
Troubleshooting
Tearing
With the Intel driver
The SNA acceleration method causes tearing on some machines. To fix this, enable the
TearFree
option in the
xf86-video-intel
driver by adding the following line to your
configuration file
:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf
Section "Device"
  Identifier "Intel Graphics"
  Driver "intel"
  Option "TearFree" "true"
EndSection
See the
original bug report
for more info.
Note
This option may not work when
SwapbuffersWait
is
false
.
This option may increase memory allocation considerably and reduce performance.
[26]
This option is problematic for applications that are very picky about vsync timing, like
Super Meat Boy
.
This option does not work with UXA acceleration method, only with SNA.
For Intel UHD 620 or 630 you will need to add
Option "TripleBuffer" "true"
in order for
TearFree
to work.
It might be necessary to disable DRI3 by adding
Option "DRI" "2"
, otherwise any full screen app (such as video playback) can break TearFree.
[27]
With the modesetting driver
TearFree support
was added
to the modesetting driver
[28]
[29]
. As the last release for the non-XWayland servers was the 21.1 release in 2021, this patch has not reached a stable release, so you will need
xorg-server-git
AUR
until then.
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf
Section "Device"
  Identifier "Intel Graphics"
  Driver "modesetting"
  Option "TearFree" "true"
EndSection
Disable Vertical Synchronization (VSYNC)
Useful when:
Chromium/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:
~/.drirc
<device screen="0" driver="dri2">
	<application name="Default">
		<option name="vblank_mode" value="0"/>
	</application>
</device>
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
:
Option "DRI" "2"
For the
modesetting
driver, this method of disabling DRI3 does not work.  Instead, one can set the environment variable
LIBGL_DRI3_DISABLE=1
.
Missing glyphs in GTK applications
Should you experience missing font glyphs in GTK applications, the following workaround might help.
Edit
/etc/environment
to add the following line:
/etc/environment
COGL_ATLAS_DEFAULT_BLIT_MODE=framebuffer
See also
FreeDesktop bug 88584
.
Corrupted and frozen graphics
If you experience corrupted and/or frozen graphics in some applications (such as random colors filling the application window, extreme unreasonable blurriness, an application failing to update its graphics at all while performing other tasks without lag, etc), try running the application with
OpenGL
instead of
Vulkan
. This has occurred on some configurations with Intel Arc GPUs.
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
:
Option "NoAccel" "True"
Alternatively, try to disable the 3D acceleration only with the
DRI
option:
Option "DRI" "False"
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
:
acpi_osi=Linux
acpi_osi="!Windows 2012"
acpi_osi=
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:
Set the AccelMethod to "uxa"
Disable VSYNC
Enable the TearFree option
Disable "DRI" and acceleration method (tested on Gen 10):
Option "NoAccel" "True"
Option "DRI" "False"
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:
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel: BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at           (null)
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel: IP: [<          (null)>]           (null)
...
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel: CPU: 0 PID: 733 Comm: gnome-shell Tainted: G     U     O    4.0.5-1-ARCH #1
...
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel: Call Trace:
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel:  [<ffffffffa055cc27>] ? i915_gem_object_sync+0xe7/0x190 [i915]
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel:  [<ffffffffa0579634>] intel_execlists_submission+0x294/0x4c0 [i915]
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel:  [<ffffffffa05539fc>] i915_gem_do_execbuffer.isra.12+0xabc/0x1230 [i915]
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel:  [<ffffffffa055d349>] ? i915_gem_object_set_to_cpu_domain+0xa9/0x1f0 [i915]
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel:  [<ffffffff811ba2ae>] ? __kmalloc+0x2e/0x2a0
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel:  [<ffffffffa0555471>] i915_gem_execbuffer2+0x141/0x2b0 [i915]
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel:  [<ffffffffa042fcab>] drm_ioctl+0x1db/0x640 [drm]
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel:  [<ffffffffa0555330>] ? i915_gem_execbuffer+0x450/0x450 [i915]
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel:  [<ffffffff8122339b>] ? eventfd_ctx_read+0x16b/0x200
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel:  [<ffffffff811ebc36>] do_vfs_ioctl+0x2c6/0x4d0
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel:  [<ffffffff811f6452>] ? __fget+0x72/0xb0
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel:  [<ffffffff811ebec1>] SyS_ioctl+0x81/0xa0
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel:  [<ffffffff8157a589>] system_call_fastpath+0x12/0x17
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel: Code:  Bad RIP value.
Jun 16 17:54:03 hostname kernel: RIP  [<          (null)>]           (null)
This can be fixed by disabling execlist support which was changed to default on with kernel 4.0. Add the following
kernel parameter
:
i915.enable_execlists=0
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
or
xe.enable_psr=0
.
This can solve error messages like
[i915] *ERROR* CPU pipe A FIFO underrun
.
OpenGL 2.1 with i915 driver
The classic mesa driver for Gen 3 GPUs included in the
mesa-amber
package reports OpenGL 2.0 by default, because the hardware is not fully compatible with OpenGL 2.1.
[30]
OpenGL 2.1 support can be enabled manually by setting
/etc/drirc
or
~/.drirc
options like:
/etc/drirc
<driconf>
...
    <device driver="i915">
        <application name="Default">
            <option name="
stub_occlusion_query
" value="
true
" />
            <option name="
fragment_shader
" value="
true
" />
        </application>
    </device>
...
</driconf>
Note
The reason of this step back was Chromium and other applications' bad experience. If needed, you might edit the drirc file in a "app-specific" style, see
here
, to disable OpenGL 2.1 on executable
chromium
for instance.
The new Gallium based i915 driver included in
mesa
package always reports OpenGL 2.1, so this setting is not needed for that driver.
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 boot loader. 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
.
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
:
intel_iommu=on,igfx_off
Or alternatively, disable IOMMU:
intel_iommu=off
Crash/freeze on low power Intel CPUs
The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed.
Reason:
enable_dc=0
may not impede on power management to the extent claimed here. (Discuss in
Talk:Intel graphics#Incorrect statements regarding power usage penalty of enable_dc=0
)
Low-powered Intel processors and/or laptop processors have a tendency to randomly hang or crash due to the problems with the power management features found in low-power Intel chips. If such a crash happens, you will not see any logs reporting this problem. Adding the following
Kernel parameters
may help to resolve the problem.
Note
It is not advised to use all three of the below kernel parameters together.
intel_idle.max_cstate=1 i915.enable_dc=0 ahci.mobile_lpm_policy=1
ahci.mobile_lpm_policy=1
fixes a hang on several Lenovo laptops and some Acer notebooks due to problematic SATA controller power management. That workaround is strictly not related to Intel graphics but it does solve related issues. Adding this kernel parameter sets the
l
ink
p
ower
m
anagement from firmware default to maximum performance and will also solve hangs when you change display brightness on certain Lenovo machines but increases idle power consumption by 1-1.5 W on modern ultrabooks. For further information, especially about the other states, see the
Linux kernel mailing list
and
Red Hat documentation
.
i915.enable_dc=0
disables GPU power management. This does solve random hangs on certain Intel systems, notably Goldmount and Kaby Lake Refresh chips. Using this parameter does result in higher power use and shorter battery life on laptops/notebooks.  If this helps, you can try finer-grained DC limitations as documented in
modinfo i915 | grep enable_dc
.
intel_idle.max_cstate=1
limits the processors sleep states, it prevents the processor from going into deep sleep states. That is absolutely not ideal and does result in higher power use and lower battery life. However, it does solve random hangs on many Intel systems. Use this if you have a Intel Baytrail or a Kaby Lake Refresh chip. Intel "Baytrail" chips were known to randomly hang without this kernel parameter due to a
hardware flaw
, theoretically fixed
2019-04-26
.
More information about the max_cstate parameter can be found in the
kernel documentation
and about the cstates in general on a
writeup on GitHub
.
If you try adding
intel_idle.max_cstate=1 i915.enable_dc=0 ahci.mobile_lpm_policy=1
in the hope of fixing frequent hangs and that solves the issue you should later remove one by one to see which of them actually helped you solve the issue. Running with cstates and display power management disabled is not advisable if the actual problem is related to SATA power management and
ahci.mobile_lpm_policy=1
is the one that actually solves it.
Check
Linux Reviews
for more details.
Higher C-states prevent wakeup from S3
In case you infrequently wake up to a black screen, but the system otherwise properly resumes with
CPU pipe A FIFO underrun
messages in the journal and limiting
intel_idle.max_cstate=1
reliably prevents that,
you can
use
Suspend and hibernate#Sleep hooks
and
cpupower-idle-set(1)
to effectively control the C-state around the suspend cycle with
-D0
and
-E
to not permanently run the CPU in the lowest C-state.
Add support for 165Hz monitor
This article or section is a candidate for merging with
Kernel mode setting#Forcing modes and EDID
.
Notes:
This technique does not appear to be specific to i915. Before merging, one should verify that the install script is necessary, and that there is not an easier way to add the EDID BIN to the initramfs. (Discuss in
Talk:Intel graphics
)
For some 165Hz monitors,
xrandr
might not display the 165Hz option, and the fix in
#Adding undetected resolutions
does not solve this. In this case, see
i915-driver-stuck-at-40hz-on-165hz-screen
.
Note
Other than creating
/etc/initramfs-tools/hooks/edid
, a
mkinitcpio
hook should be made:
/etc/initcpio/install/edid
#!/bin/bash

build() {
    add_file /lib/firmware/edid/edid.bin
}

help() {
    cat <<HELPEOF
This hook add support for 165Hz
HELPEOF
}
Then append
edid
in HOOKS of
/etc/mkinitcpio.conf
, Just like this:
/etc/mkinitcpio.conf
HOOKS=(... fsck edid)
Then
regenerate the initramfs
.
Freeze after wake from sleep/suspend with Raptor Lake and Alder Lake-P
Users with Raptor Lake and Alder Lake-P 12th gen mobile processor laptops from various vendors experienced freeze and black-screen after waking up from suspending. It is because many laptop vendors ship an incorrect VBT (Video BIOS Table), as described in freedesktop issues
5531
6401
, that wrongly describe the actual ports connected to the iGPU. In this case, all of the documented cases concern duplicate eDP entries.
Considering most vendors
will not
publish a BIOS update for a laptop with a properly working Windows OS, Linux users could only address the issue on the kernel side. The preferred way to prevent this, is
loading a modified VBT
. The idea is to remove duplicate eDP entries from the VBT, including a modified VBT in the intramfs and passing it to the i915 driver as a kernel parameter.
The duplicate eDP entry needs to be identified by analyzing the output of:
# intel_vbt_decode /sys/kernel/debug/dri/1/i915_vbt
Child device info:
        Device handle: 0x0008 (LFP 1 (eDP))
        Device type: 0x1806 (unknown)
 ...
 Child device info:
        Device handle: 0x0080 (LFP 2 (eDP))
        Device type: 0x1806 (unknown)
This works by copying the VBT and editing it with a hex editor and changing the device type corresponding with the duplicate device handle to
00 00
:
$ cat /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/i915_vbt > vbt
--- vbt
+++ modified_vbt
@@ -22,10 +22,10 @@
 00000150  00 08 00 20 00 08 00 10  00 08 00 02 00 08 00 01  |... ............|
 00000160  00 08 00 00 01 08 00 00  00 04 00 00 00 40 00 00  |.............@..|
 00000170  00 20 00 00 00 10 00 00  00 02 00 00 00 01 00 00  |. ..............|
-00000180  00 00 01 00 00 02 8b 01  02 04 00 00 27 08 00 06  |............'...|
-00000190  18 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 0a 00 00  |................|
+00000180  00 00 01 00 00 02 8b 01  02 04 00 00 27 08 00 00  |............'...|
+00000190  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 0a 00 00  |................|
 000001a0  03 00 00 00 c0 00 40 00  20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |......@. .......|
-000001b0  00 00 20 00 80 00 06 18  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |.. .............|
+000001b0  00 00 20 00 80 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |.. .............|
 000001c0  00 00 00 00 07 00 00 00  00 00 00 c0 00 10 00 20  |............... |
 000001d0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 20 00 04 00 d2 60 00  |......... ....`.|
 000001e0  10 10 00 23 21 10 00 00  00 00 00 07 00 00 02 00  |...#!...........|
The modified VBT can then be loaded by copying it to
/lib/firmware/i915/modified_vbt
and including the file in the initramfs. For
mkinitcpio
, the
FILES
field in
/etc/mkinitcpio.conf
can be used:
FILES=(/lib/firmware/i195/modified_vbt)
regenerate the initramfs
, and pass the new table to the i915 as a kernel parameter:
i915.vbt_firmware=i915/modified_vbt
.
Washed out colors
By default some monitors might not be recognized properly by the Intel GPU and have washed out colors because it's not in full-range RGB mode.
Fix colors for Wayland
/etc/udev/rules.d/80-i915.rules
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="module", KERNEL=="i915", RUN+="/usr/local/bin/intel-wayland-fix-full-color"
/usr/local/bin/intel-wayland-fix-full-color
#!/bin/bash

readarray -t proptest_result <<<"$(/usr/bin/proptest -M i915 -D /dev/dri/card0 | grep -E 'Broadcast|Connector')"

for ((i = 0; i < ${#proptest_result[*]}; i += 2)); do
    connector=$(echo ${proptest_result[i]} | awk '{print $2}')
    connector_id=$(echo ${proptest_result[i + 1]} | awk '{print $1}')

    /usr/bin/proptest -M i915 $connector connector $connector_id 1
done
If you are using
GNOME
,
an alternative
is to add
<rgbrange>full</rgbrange>
to the
~/.config/monitors.xml
configuration. For example:
~/.config/monitors.xml
<monitors version="2">
  <configuration>
    <layoutmode>logical</layoutmode>
    <logicalmonitor>
      <x>0</x>
      <y>0</y>
      <primary>yes</primary>
      <monitor>
        <monitorspec>
          <connector>HDMI-1</connector>
          <vendor>MetaProduct's Inc.</vendor>
          <product>MetaMonitor</product>
          <serial>0x123456</serial>
        </monitorspec>
        <mode>
          <width>1920</width>
          <height>1080</height>
          <rate>60.000</rate>
        </mode>
        <rgbrange>full</rgbrange>
      </monitor>
    </logicalmonitor>
  </configuration>
</monitors>
Note
If displays are rearranged or display settings changed in any other way, a new layout might be added to
monitors.xml
file without the
<rgbrange>full</rgbrange>
tag. To ensure the RGB range is consistently set across different layouts, consider adding the tag to every duplicated entry of the logical monitor.
If GDM login screen is not using full RGB range, copy user's
monitors.xml
to gdm's home directory. See
GDM#Setup default monitor settings
Fix colors for X11/Xorg
# xrandr --output NAME_OF_YOUR_OUTPUT --set "Broadcast RGB" "Full"
Unable to run some programs, "bus error" with B580
When getting an error like this when running some programs (eg. vainfo, falkon, mpv...):
1234 bus error : vaapi
The probable cause could be disabled ReBar (Resizable BAR) in BIOS/UEFI. Some motherboards may allow to enable ReBar only when UEFI mode is active, without legacy support.
See also
linux graphics
(includes a list of 106 related products)
Intel® Processor Graphics
(includes a table of processor series, former code name, launch date and graphics technology)