Reporting bugs to Intel graphics developers (or any open source project) can be intimidating. You want the right developers to pay attention to your bug, so you need to provide enough information to help them classify the bug. Ian Romanick describes what makes a good Mesa bug report.

One of the things Ian talks about is tagging your bug report with the right Intel graphics code name, and providing PCI ID information for the graphics hardware. Chad Versace provides a tool to find out which Intel graphics you have on your system. That tool is also useful for translating the marketing names to code names and hardware details (like whether your system is a GT2 or GT3).

In the “omg, that’s epic” category, Adrian Courrèges analyzes the graphics techniques used in Grand Theft Auto V on PS3. It’s a great post with a lot of visuals. I love the discussion of deleting every-other-pixel to improve performance in one graphics stage, and then extrapolating them back later. It’s an example of something that’s probably really hardware specific, since Kristen Hogsberg mentioned he doesn’t think it will be much help on Intel graphics hardware. When game designers know they’re only selling into one platform, they can use hardware-specific techniques to improve graphics performance. However, it will bite them later if they try to port their game to other platforms.