Radeon DPM Support Should Now Be In Good Shape

[gradinaruvasile]

I would love to use this feature as my card (ASUS EAH6870 DirectCU/2DI2S/1GD5) is really noisy but it freezes my PC when enabled and the monitor goes to sleep mode.
If I have radeon compiled as module and firmware in /lib/firmware/radeon freez occurs when the module loads and if I have it with firmware in kernel freez is right at load of kernel.
I have enabled intel integrated card to see if there is any output but there is nothing on the screen.
Do I need more than radeon module and firmware from http://people.freedesktop.org/~agd5f/radeon_ucode/ ?

Kernel 3.11, firmware, drm, radeon.dpm=1 at the kernel command line, mesa at least 9.2.

[pixo]

Kernel 3.11, firmware, drm, radeon.dpm=1 at the kernel command line, mesa at least 9.2.

got all that
kernel 3.11.1
dmr and mesa from git

but if i enable radeon.dpm=1 on kernel command line my PC freezes during boot

[gradinaruvasile]

My desktop too freezes with this radeon, but only after a few hours or sometimes a day of uptime. In the meantime it works perfectly (AMD 7560D/A8-5500 APU).

What distro do you use and what hardware you have?

[edoantonioco]

Did you download the appropiate firmware and put it in /lib/firmware/radeon ?
Run dmesg | grep dpm in terminal, if it failed to intialize then you need the right ucode...

I'm not sure which you should d/l... Seeing how you have a HD4000 series card you should download:
RV710_smc.bin
RV730_smc.bin
RV740_smc.bin
RV770_smc.bin

and put it all in /lib/firmware/radeon
Then reboot and run dmesg | grep dpm to verify if DPM intialized.

I run dmesg | grep dpm in terminal, and everything seems to be allright (I use rolling release, so that files are not outdated), and I see how the fan work a lot less than before, but less FPS in games is something I have seen (the most tested game has been team fortress 2, and the same map runs worst with that activated). So, if I enable it I win dynamic power management support, but I lose FPS in games
(in AMD Radeon HD4200, free driver, R600 back-end activated).
So, seems than it does not improve FPS in any hardware

[Bushido_root]

I run dmesg | grep dpm in terminal, and everything seems to be allright (I use rolling release, so that files are not outdated), and I see how the fan work a lot less than before, but less FPS in games is something I have seen (the most tested game has been team fortress 2, and the same map runs worst with that activated). So, if I enable it I win dynamic power management support, but I lose FPS in games
(in AMD Radeon HD4200, free driver, R600 back-end activated).
So, seems than it does not improve FPS in any hardware

Not sure... Perhaps you'll need Mesa from git (9.2) and xorg video driver from git (7.2) as well for better video game performance.

[pixo]

The killer is the gardener... err its the monitor.
My monitor is Dell UltraSharp U2913WM and when connected dpm code does not work.
While connected to my TV dpm works.
It may be due to the way the monitor presents itself trought DVI and HDMI port.
From my previous experience I know that it presents itself diferently on DVI, HDMI and DP.

For now I have tested DVI - DVI and DVI - HDMI (card does not have HDMI port).
I will test with DP but first will need to buy the cable.

[agd5f]

I run dmesg | grep dpm in terminal, and everything seems to be allright (I use rolling release, so that files are not outdated), and I see how the fan work a lot less than before, but less FPS in games is something I have seen (the most tested game has been team fortress 2, and the same map runs worst with that activated). So, if I enable it I win dynamic power management support, but I lose FPS in games
(in AMD Radeon HD4200, free driver, R600 back-end activated).
So, seems than it does not improve FPS in any hardware

The important thing to remember is that dpm is about saving pwer, not improving performance. It happens to improve performance on recent APUs since their default clocks are generally pretty low and enabling dpm allows the GPU to utilize the higher clock speeds. On most dGPUs, the cards default clocks are already pretty high, so dpm doesn't really improve performance. It does however save power since the clocks are dynamically lowered when the GPU is not busy.

[edoantonioco]

The important thing to remember is that dpm is about saving pwer, not improving performance. It happens to improve performance on recent APUs since their default clocks are generally pretty low and enabling dpm allows the GPU to utilize the higher clock speeds. On most dGPUs, the cards default clocks are already pretty high, so dpm doesn't really improve performance. It does however save power since the clocks are dynamically lowered when the GPU is not busy.

Thanks for the info Seems than I cant have both things

I use kernel 3.10 and 3.11, so, what I thought was to use kernel 3.10 for gaming (no dpm thing there) and 3.11 for anything else. But seems to be than if I put the "radeon.dpm=1" in the kernel boot line, I cant start any other kernel than doesnt support it, in this case kernel 3.10.
So, now I have to choose: enable dpm or no? Afterall, the dpm features are great for just ignore it.

[agd5f]

Thanks for the info Seems than I cant have both things

I use kernel 3.10 and 3.11, so, what I thought was to use kernel 3.10 for gaming (no dpm thing there) and 3.11 for anything else. But seems to be than if I put the "radeon.dpm=1" in the kernel boot line, I cant start any other kernel than doesnt support it, in this case kernel 3.10.
So, now I have to choose: enable dpm or no? Afterall, the dpm features are great for just ignore it.

dpm shouldn't reduce performance significantly. If it does, there's probably a problem and you should report a bug. Note that with dpm you can force the performance level to the lowest or highest level via sysfs if you want to force a performance level rather than letting the hw choose based on GPU load.

[edoantonioco]

dpm shouldn't reduce performance significantly. If it does, there's probably a problem and you should report a bug. Note that with dpm you can force the performance level to the lowest or highest level via sysfs if you want to force a performance level rather than letting the hw choose based on GPU load.

I think I know what you mean. In this blog

http://www.botchco.com/agd5f/?p=57

you says than to force the performance level, the file in
/sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_state
by default is in the state "balanced", but if I change it to "performance" I will take all the performance from the GPU.
I used it, and in fact, it increase the FPS in team fortress 2
So, I think the program should know if I am using 3D stuff, so by itself it should change the flag to "performance" inside the file.
So, to acces to these features (I mean, to use different flags depending of the situation (battery, balanced or performance)), the best way is to create a script than just running it, it change the info inside that file depending if I want battery performance, 3D games performance..., because seems to be than the dpm program doesnt do that job by its own (at least in my experience). I need to test it more, but seems to be than my problem was solved thanks to that info.