One of the interesting new additions with the upcoming Intel Xe3 integrated and discrete graphics is the Variable Register Thread "VRT" feature . Making use of Variable Register Thread can reduce register splitting, reduce bandwidth consumption, and improve overall performance. More background information on Intel VRT can be found in that aforelinked Phoronix article. But now the ability is coming to optionally disable VRT.

Variable Register Thread sounds quite enticing and the limited performance numbers tossed around in the original merge request are very promising. Coming as somewhat of a surprise