Intel Xe vs. i915 Driver Performance On Linux 6.19 For Arc Alchemist GPUs

Written by Michael Larabel in Display Drivers on 28 December 2025 at 11:10 AM EST. Page 5 of 5. 20 Comments.
FluidX3D benchmark with settings of Test: FP32-FP32. Xe Driver was the fastest.
FluidX3D benchmark with settings of Test: FP32-FP16S. Xe Driver was the fastest.
FluidX3D benchmark with settings of Test: FP32-FP16C. Xe Driver was the fastest.

With the FluidX3D CFD software was some small improvements in switching over the Xe kernel driver on Linux 6.19.

ProjectPhysX OpenCL-Benchmark benchmark with settings of Operation: FP16 Compute. Xe Driver was the fastest.
ProjectPhysX OpenCL-Benchmark benchmark with settings of Operation: INT64 Compute. Xe Driver was the fastest.
ProjectPhysX OpenCL-Benchmark benchmark with settings of Operation: INT16 Compute. Xe Driver was the fastest.
ProjectPhysX OpenCL-Benchmark benchmark with settings of Operation: INT8 Compute. Xe Driver was the fastest.
ProjectPhysX OpenCL-Benchmark benchmark with settings of Operation: Memory Bandwidth Coalesced Write. Xe Driver was the fastest.

In other OpenCL benchmarks on the Intel Compute Runtime, switching to the Xe driver on the Arc A580 had minimal difference on the overall performance.

Geometric Mean Of All Test Results benchmark with settings of Result Composite, Intel Arc A580 On Linux, i915 vs. Xe Drivers EOY2025. Xe Driver was the fastest.

In some workloads there were performance advantages in switching over to the Xe kernel driver rather than the default i915 driver for Intel Alchemist hardware. But besides the performance, the Xe kernel driver is now better maintained than the i915 driver, is designed to be more robust for non-x86/x86_64 architectures, and other fundamental improvements over the aging i915 kernel driver. Those wanting to dig through this round of i915 vs. Xe benchmarks on Linux 6.19 with the A580 can find all of my raw data via this result file.

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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.