Travelmate 115 graphics driver issue

[Hiếu Trần]

We've got most of our B115's (UEFI), A0756 and B113's running the older 2.13 version and are just in the process of customising 2.21 for use in the 2015/16 school year. Very very happy with 2.13.

Our 2.13's were able to use the 1.0.7 Intel driver as per the 'older' instructions for additional B115 graphics tweaks. Using the lshw -c video command shows  a 64bit '3rd Gen core Graphics controller' installed.  Installing the driver resulted in noticeable improvements in render times when using Blender and Openshot goes along quite nicely. The system also generally behaved snappier.

2.21 requires no such graphic driver tweaks, and even when attempted the Intel 1.0.8 installer does not work (common problem reported in Ubuntu forums). Running the terminal command again shows that ValleyView Gen7 controller is installed, but is 32bit. Rendering in Blender is very slow and the lag when using Openshot is unbearable. We have 4GB RAM and are not pushing anything over 3GB when performing these operations.

Wondering if anyone else is having the same issue and if this 32 bit graphics driver problem is being addressed in 2.22?

Keep up the great work here people.

[jnetman1]

2.23 should be better with that device. The Intel driver installer from the prior instructions actually only updated the Intel kernel driver to Linux 3.16 version. As of ubermix 2.2, the 3.16 kernel is the default.

All that said, I have built a backport package for the Intel kernel driver from the 3.19 kernel that you can download from here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B52M_cKAX2ARREJiZWl0c0FoUjA/view?usp=sharing . On the B115s, I'm seeing better performance and improved battery life with the newer driver. Should work on all Intel laptops, and I plan to include it as a default in a future build, once I've been able to test it a little more.

You might also try updating the user-space (ie xorg server) drivers, which include a lot of the 3D code, to see if you can eek out a little more performance. There is some risk in that these are typically nightly builds of upstream updates, so you'll want to be sure to test them fully before you deploy at scale. To install, do the following from the terminal (ctrl-alt-t) - preferably in generic mode:

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sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
I haven't seen a huge difference in performance myself - your mileage may vary.