Phoronix has released a pair of reviews focusing on the graphical performance changes we have seen recently when gaming on a Linux system.  The first looks at the last seven major kernel updates and how they changed the performance of Intel's HD4000 graphics core.  The news is not great, in most cases the performance remained mostly unchanged and there are a few instances where the performance gain seen by kernel 3.4 have disappeared by 3.8 and in some cases it would make sense to wait until Mesa 9.1 arrives. 

Their second article looks at the upcoming Ubuntu 13.04 release and the support the OS will have for AMD's GPUs straight out of the box with no customization.  From there they move onto Intel's HD3000 graphics with good results to report.  The new OS will not be out until April, but from what Phoronix has seen not only will this kernel handle discrete and integral GPUs well, the performance is the best they've seen yet.

"With the Intel Haswell product launch coming up soon, here's a look at how the Intel "Ivy Bridge" HD 4000 graphics support has matured on the seven most recent Linux kernel releases. This benchmarking shows how the performance of the Intel DRM driver has changed between the Linux 3.2 kernel and the Linux 3.8 kernel that's presently under development when using the integrated graphics found on the latest-generation Core i7 CPU."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk