How to speed up your Intel graphics card

As we well know, one of the most common problems in Linux has to do with the graphic support of our cards. Many times we do not know whether to use free drivers, or the proprietary ones provided by the manufacturers. Moreover, many times we have problems with both types of drivers and there we no longer know very well where the problem comes from.

The fact is that many times the problem has to do with the graphic acceleration of our cards, a problem that usually affects some Intel graphics cards and their respective drivers, such as the Intel 82852 / 855GM. In this post we want to show you how you can accelerate your Intel graphics card step by step and in a very simple way. Also, by following the tutorial, you will be able to familiarize yourself with the use of the terminal, if it still makes you something cumbersome. We started.

First of all we have to be clear about the way in which we will solve the problem. Basically, what we will do is change acceleration architecture of our cards from SNA to UXA, the two latest graphics acceleration architectures developed by Intel.

What is UXA and SNA?

In 2009, Ubuntu started using graphics acceleration architecture uxa (UMA Acceleration Architecture) on your Intel cards to support Xorg, and later this was replaced for the architecture SNA (Sandybridge's New Acceleration). So the change that we will see in this little tutorial basically means going back to the previous architecture. The truth is that it usually solves the most common graphic problems that we usually have (slow video playback, strange color changes on the screen ...). Well, here we go.

Switching from SNA to UXA

El first step, or rather one of the previous steps, is know what type of acceleration we have. For this we can show the content of the file xorg.0.log inside the directory / var / log / through the program cat. Also, if we use pipes (like grep) we can filter the result and hit much finer to what we really want to show. That is, to know the type of acceleration of our cards, it is enough that we execute:

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -i sna

The output should look something like this:

Next we have to create a configuration file called xorg.conf inside the directory / etc / X11. For this we can go to the directory in question by cd and then create an empty text file using touch. To do this we execute the following commands:

cd / etc / X11

touch xorg.conf

The next step is write the corresponding content inside the file xorg.conf we just created, which will change the acceleration architecture of our graphics cards from SNA to UXA. The content is as follows:

Section “Device”
Identifier “Intel Graphics”
intel driver
Option "AccelMethod" "uxa"
EndSection

We can copy and paste it manually inside the file xorg.conf, which is inside the directory / etc / X11 or on the contrary, we can use the command threw out y redirect its output to the file in question (through>), which we can do by executing the following command:

echo -e 'Section "Device" \ n Identifier "Card0" \ n Driver "Intel" \ n Option "AccelMethod" "uxa" \ nEndSection'> /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Now we only have save the file and Reiniciar the system. Once we log back in, we can check that the acceleration architecture of our graphics cards has been changed successfully. To do this we can use the command that we have executed at the beginning, but now instead of filtering the output by "sna", we can filter it by "uxa" and thus see if it has changed us or not, that is, we execute the following command:

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -i uxa

Now we should see an output similar to the one we showed you in the initial capture, but instead of putting SNA in red we should see UXA. This means that our PC is already using this latest architecture.

Reversing the changes

Now how can we reverse changes? Well, it is very simple, it is enough that let's delete the file xorg.conf and let's restart the system so that the configuration returns to its previous state. We can delete the file by executing rm(de remove), as follows:

rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

If you had graphic problems that prevented your PC from working properly and giving the maximum of its graphic potential, now those problems they should have already disappeared. In addition, all the steps that have been followed in the tutorial could also have been done graphically, using a file manager (such as Nautilus, for example) and doing everything manually (copy-paste, create-delete files ...).

Still, the terminal is a very powerful tool and from Ubunlog We want to do everything possible so that you become familiar with it and understand that the control we can have over our PC through the terminal is very great. If you still have any problems after completing the tutorial, do not hesitate to leave us your problems in the comments section and we will do our best to help you.