X.Org ATI Driver Supports New Power Options

[bridgman]

Agd5f posted a patch that prints a line in the log every time the clock switches. Don't remember if it was here or on IRC though...

[signor_rossi]

I set the options, but i don't know if it does anything. How can i test this?

If you have a laptop you could use powertop to check it indirectly on battery...

[bugmenot]

Or apply this patch bridgman talked about and alex created. Very nice one:

http://www.botchco.com/alex/xorg/print_clock_pm.diff

[Boerkel]

I'm sorry for making so much trouble, but i don't know how i can do that.
How can i apply this patch?

[elanthis]

Use the patch command, e.g.

patch -p1 < print_click_pm.diff

inside of the xorg source tree, then recompile.

[moomoo]

Okay, the option ForceLowPowerMode is giving me some headaches on my hd3470 mobility. Apparently it works just fine, the problem is when I try to switch back to console / shutdown the laptop. When I try to switch back to console (ctrl-alt-[fnXY|backspace]) the mouse pointer disappears and the computer freezes badly. I can log in via ssh but cannot manage to kill X / get back a working screen. Not even sysrq works. When shutting down, the X server shows the lovely startup black/white grid, the mouse pointer disappears, and the pc locks. Sometimes (!!), say one time every five, it manages to shutdown 'cleanly' (I never get to see the console though, X grid until the monitor shuts down). Removing the option from xorg.conf completely fixes this.
Running latest xf86-video-ati from git (-9999 gentoo ebuild from x11 overlay), tested it with kernel 2.6.29.1 and 2.6.30-rc3-gitwhatever, xorg-server-1.6.1, mesa-9999 branch radeon-rewrite (really don't care about 3d though), libdrm-9999
Any ideas? Need some more info ?

[bugmenot]

moomoo:
That's why it is not enabled by default.

Report a bug on https://bugs.freedesktop.org/

[moomoo]

I will, was just checking if anyone else had the same problem and/or a simple fix before bugging directly the developers

[glock24]

The radeon driver that comes with Ubuntu 9.04 finally works with my 3650. I noticed the average system temp was like 10C higher, so I activated the "DynamicPM" option, but the temperature went even higher after that. "ForceLowPowerMode" is not present in this version of the driver.

[signor_rossi]

The radeon driver that comes with Ubuntu 9.04 finally works with my 3650. I noticed the average system temp was like 10C higher, so I activated the "DynamicPM" option, but the temperature went even higher after that. "ForceLowPowerMode" is not present in this version of the driver.

'DynamicPM' only kicks in when the screen turns of, glock24.
But your observation that the temperture is generally high coincides with mine without PM enabled (fortunately 'ForceLowPowerMode' works for me and keeps my GPU cool). It almost seems to me that my GPU is always under load with the radeon driver, since while assumedly idling it goes up to temperatures that fglrx reached only under load. Time for a bug report maybe?