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[edit] Introduction

For the console see Uvesafb.

For X there are currently two drivers available :

• the good and old i810 driver
• the new shiny intel driver

It's recommended to try the intel driver first, because Arch is supposed to use new and current softwares, etc.. But if you have some issues with it (for example : suspend to ram), then try i810.

For some Chipsets there are special pages:

• Intel_GMA_945
• Intel_GMA_950

[edit] Xorg intel driver

A list of supported chipsets is available here.

[edit] Installation and Configuration

Simply do :

pacman -Sy xf86-video-intel

Then edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and specify the Driver

Section "Device"
 Identifier "Intel"
 Driver "intel"
EndSection

[edit] Performance

[edit] 2D

If you experience slow redraw or slow scrolling in some applications, it might be because of the new 2D acceleration architecture for X.Org, exa. To work around that, you have two options that both involve editing the Device section of xorg.conf :

• Add the following lines (see man exa) :

Option "AccelMethod" "exa"
Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"

Note that this has no effect if you already reverted to xaa.

• Or revert back to the old xaa architecture (see man intel) :

Option "AccelMethod" "xaa"

Reference

[edit] 3D

You may want to try setting INTEL_BATCH env var to 1 to get better 3d performance :

export INTEL_BATCH=1

You can put this variable in /etc/environment if you want to keep it.

Reference

[edit] Xorg i810 driver

[edit] Installation

Simply do :

pacman -Sy xf86-video-i810

Then edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and specify the Driver

Section "Device"
 Identifier "Intel"
 Driver "i810"
EndSection