Intel Integrated Graphics

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Intel HD and Iris Graphics are integrated GPUs commonly found on Intel CPUs. Their performance and their driver support in x.org, has been improving at a steady pace for several years now. Since 2008 Intel's drivers are open-source, and are generally agreed upon to be excellent in quality and well maintained by Intel. Intel Integrated GPUs seem to be an excellent choice for a MythTV frontend.

If you have any experience with these GPUs in MythTV frontends, please add it to the experience matrix so others can benefit from your experience!

Performance and power consumption

Since the release of the GMA X4500, the 3D performance of Intel GPUs is now within reach of nVidia's integrated offerings, see here. This would seem to indicate that an X4500 is more than enough for typical MythFrontend duties. These GPUs can use the VAAPI library for hardware accelerated decoding.

Users and reviewers often claim that Intel GPUs have very low power consumption. There seems to be consensus that integrated GPUs in general (including the Intel GMA) are much more power efficient than discrete ones.

See:

Intel GPU Experience Matrix

Below is the experience matrix for the Intel CPU with integrated graphics when using MythFrontend. Please report your findings (playback profiles etc) in the table and list any problems. Note that some entries refer to chipsets before GPUs were placed on the CPU die.

Model Name Model Number Onboard video 1080i playback Bluray playback Extras Power consumption / TDP Released
Pentium G3240 Intel HD Yes (YADIF/Greedy) Yes OpenGL render 20W idle / 54W 2014
Core i7 Sandy Bridge Intel HD 3000 Yes (Bob(2x,HW),Onefield(1x,HW)) Yes OpenGL render - Z68 Express Chipset Unknown 2011
Core i3 Sandy Bridge HD 2000 Likely, no problems reported Unknown Acer Aspire Revo RL80 Unknown 2011
Core i5 680 Intel HD Limited (linear blend) gittery Limited H55 Chipset  ? / 73W 2010
G35 Express 82G35 82G35 Unknown Unknown -  ? / 28W 2007
Pentium X4500 / G41 X4500 Yes (Kernel) Unknown P5QPL-AM mobo  ? / 65W 2006
Q965 Express 82Q965 82Q965 Limited Skips Unknown -  ? / 28W 2006

Video Tearing

If you experience video tearing during playback (horizontal split in the screen) particularly if using a 4K TV or monitor (resolution 3840x2180), this may help:

Create file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf with the following contents:

Section "Device"
    Identifier "Intel Graphics"
    Driver "intel"
    Option "TearFree" "true"
    Option "AccelMethod" "sna"
EndSection

Restart your system to see the change.