Ubuntu – Intel 945 Graphics Driver

Posted by Pourya Shahroudi on May 14, 2009 in Linux | 7 comments

I have been using xubuntu linux in the past few months, its a great operating system. Its stable, reliable and best of all XFCE makes it super lite. I have installed Xubuntu on my laptop and it has an Intel 945 Graphics card. Recently I have realized that the graphics card driver is rendering some games slower than its suppose to, I’m not really a gamer! I did some research on the web, on most of the forums its recommended to use the built in driver inside the kernel, which I’m using right now. I have just found a tutorial, which help you configure the graphics card in order to increase its performance. You would just need to:

Open your Termianl

change to root user:
$ sudo su

Update your /etc/X11/xorg.conf to look like this:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Option "AccelMethod" "exa"
Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
Option "ExaNoComposite" "false"
EndSection

Add the following as a separate line to your /etc/environment file:
INTEL_BATCH = “1″

And that’s it!
There is also a driver on Intel’s website, which I believe is the same as the one build into Ubuntu. So before doing anything try doing the above instructions!
Update:
Please replace your xorg.conf with the one I’m using. The problem with Intel driver is a well known issue. I had problems with FireFox whenever I played a flash file, in some cases it even crashed the browser. Adding Option “MigrationHeuristic” “greedy” would solve your problem. Here is my xorg.conf file:

# xorg.conf (X.Org X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# Note that some configuration settings that could be done previously
# in this file, now are automatically configured by the server and settings
# here are ignored.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
#   sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "Device"
	Identifier "Configured Video Device"
	Option "AccelMethod" "exa"
	Option "ExaNoComposite" "false"
	Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier	"Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
	Monitor		"Configured Monitor"
	Device		"Configured Video Device"
EndSection