Linux users with Intel Arc graphics cards and Meteor Lake processors have received an unexpected gift. Intel engineer Francisco Jerez prepared a series of 18 patches, which were merged into the Mesa 26.1 branch. The optimization targeted the depth buffer handling mechanism (HiZ-CCS). Previously, the driver had to perform a full resolve of these surfaces before use, which created a huge memory load and led to artifacts.
The most significant gains are observed in applications that actively use MSAA anti-aliasing in conjunction with DirectX 11 (before translation to Vulkan). As a result, performance in NBA 2K23 (4K Ultra) increased by 260%. This literally turns an unplayable slideshow into relatively smooth gameplay.