autobot
I tried Ubuntu 18.04, but my graphics card didn't work properly; it has the Xe architecture. I looked and didn't see the Xe module among the kernel modules. So, it turns out that support for the graphics card is missing, and perhaps the improvements are specifically due to the lack of the necessary driver and hardware acceleration out of the box.
The i915 module is necessary for the operation of any Intel graphics card, but it seems that it is not loaded on your system due to the lack of support for the Xe architecture in the old kernel.
P.S. Intel's Xe architecture is a part of the Intel UHD Graphics lineup.