Problematic code dating back to 2017 has now been reverted within the Intel open-source Mesa driver code that led to various games having rendering/corruption issues as well as various hangs and crashes in other games. This affected a variety of Intel graphics hardware and software while now has finally been tracked down with the problematic code removed. This is a big improvement for Linux gamers on Intel graphics.
Merged a few minutes ago to Mesa Git was the merge request entitled anv: Farewell, Hulk speckles (you won’t be missed and also smash yourselves somewhere else). While not the most clear title and it’s just one patch as a code revert, it’s a really big deal.
As noted in that merge request for the bugs now fixed:
A 9 month old bug report over Age of Wonders 4 corruption on an Arc B580.
Intel engineer Lionel Landwerlin who ultimately uncovered the underlying issue had commented on that bug report seven months ago “I can reproduce 100% locally but I’m struggling to see where the problem is.” He showed rendering issues too while spent the past several months figuring out the cause.
Opened a half-year ago for Battlemage was another bug report of DIRT Rally 2.0 having a scrambled screen when using ultra quality settings:
Intel engineer Tapani Pälli also was able to reproduce the issue months ago with not only DiRT Rally 2.0 but other games/apps as well and on both X.Org and Wayland.
Another bug report noted colorful graphics for the game Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora:
Another bug report indicated corruption with an Arc B580 for the game Enshrouded.
There was also a bug report over Spider-Man Remastered having some textures not rendered correctly with Battlemage.
Plus bug reports around hangs for Assassin’s Creed Shadows on Lunar Lake and a crash for Final Fantasy XVI on Lunar Lake too. Those bug reports aren’t yet closed but are as marked as related to this Intel issue uncovered.
After months of sorting through these Intel graphics issues, this revert of a few lines of code should fix these issues plus who knows how many other game rendering issues for Intel graphics hardware on Linux. The fix is to now not always set cube face enables for all surfaces after the code in 2017 had set it to enable for all surfaces.
The patch was merged today to Mesa 25.3-devel Git while is also marked for back-porting to the Mesa 25.2 stable series. A big improvement/fix you’ll want to get soon if you are doing any Linux gaming on recent Intel graphics hardware.
