Linux 7.2 delivers double-digit gains for Intel Panther Lake graphics
Intel’s Arc B390 integrated graphics are showing higher performance with the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel. Phoronix recorded gains across several OpenGL and Vulkan workloads using a Panther Lake laptop.
The testing used an MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ equipped with an Intel Core Ultra X7 358H processor and Arc B390 Xe3 graphics. Linux 7.1 stable was compared with a Linux 7.2 development build from July 17. Both configurations used Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, Mesa 26.0.3 and the same kernel configuration.
Phoronix GPU tests
The test suite included GravityMark, Unvanquished and Xonotic. GravityMark is a synthetic graphics benchmark with Vulkan ray tracing support. Unvanquished and Xonotic are open-source games tested through automated Phoronix Test Suite profiles, which use fixed settings and repeatable benchmark runs. Phoronix provides the automation, but it did not create the rendering workloads.
The largest improvement was recorded in Unvanquished at 1920 × 1200 with medium settings, where performance increased by around 12% . The gain dropped to roughly 6% with the high-quality preset. Xonotic was between 5% and 6.7% faster depending on the selected graphics settings.
GravityMark’s Vulkan ray tracing test improved by only around 1%. Other Arc B390 graphics tests also favored Linux 7.2, although Phoronix noted that performance remained lower than expected in some workloads. The gains were attributed to changes in Intel’s Xe kernel graphics driver.
SoC power consumption remained nearly identical between the two kernel versions. This suggests the graphics gains should not reduce battery life on Panther Lake laptops or gaming handhelds. Most CPU workloads also showed little difference between Linux 7.1 and Linux 7.2.
Linux 7.2 is expected to reach stable status during the second half of August . Phoronix reports that it is also scheduled to become the default kernel for Ubuntu 26.10 and other Linux distributions releasing later this year.
Source: Phoronix via TechPowerUP
