AMDGPU Kernel Driver Is Working Out Well On Linux 5.0

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMDGPU Kernel Driver Is Working Out Well On Linux 5.0

While no measurable performance changes for either Polaris or Vega, the AMDGPU kernel driver in Linux 5.0 appears to be in largely good shape now mid-way through the cycle...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.0-AMDGPU-Stable

[Venemo]

Michael have you tried plugging in your dual 4K monitors to a Polaris card? When I do that I experience some severe flickering (I tested on 4.19 - 5.0-rc2). Opened a bug report but didn't get a response yet. https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109359 - it can be worked around by manually setting the GPU clocks, but it's still a hassle to do that at every boot.

[Brisse]

I've also been trying to get Freesync up and running (on Debian Sid) and after some initial issues I finally managed to compile Linux 5.0-rc3 yesterday, and I've also built Mesa 19.0-git, although I'm still working on the cross compile, but it should still work as long as I stick to x64_86 applications, right? Doesn't seem to work. Looks like I might need xf86-video-amdgpu from git as well but I've yet to manage to get it to compile.

[johanb]

Michael have you tried plugging in your dual 4K monitors to a Polaris card? When I do that I experience some severe flickering (I tested on 4.19 - 5.0-rc2). Opened a bug report but didn't get a response yet. https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109359 - it can be worked around by manually setting the GPU clocks, but it's still a hassle to do that at every boot.

Not sure if you have any use of this report, but I have one LG 4K monitor and two 1280x1024 monitors connected to my Fury X which works fine on Linux 4.19. Not two 4K screens but still a higher resolution than most people.

[Brisse]

Status update.

Managed to cross compile mesa, fetched xf86-video-amdgpu from oibaf and set Option "VariableRefresh" "on" in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-amdgpu.conf.

Rebooted. Getting vrr_capable in xrandr, but I though there should be an vrr_enabled entry as well but there's not. Glxinfo is reporting Mesa 19.0-git as expected.

Fired up Rocket League. Ensured v-sync was on and set the framerate limiter to 60fps so I would easily see if my monitor went down to 60hz, but it doesn't so it's not working for some reason

[aufkrawall]

Michael have you tried plugging in your dual 4K monitors to a Polaris card? When I do that I experience some severe flickering (I tested on 4.19 - 5.0-rc2). Opened a bug report but didn't get a response yet. https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109359 - it can be worked around by manually setting the GPU clocks, but it's still a hassle to do that at every boot.

Don't expect a fix for this for Polaris GPUs, I suspect it's a hardware flaw. Get yourself a script that watches if maximum VRAM pstate is enforced and start it automatically as root via your init solution (systemd ).
There are lots of reports for flickering with Polaris with high refresh rate or dual monitor setups. I also have this issue on Windows, though to a much lesser extent.

[Haxk20]

Running 5.0-rc3 but i didnt see any boost in FPS in games actually. I will run phoronix benchmark tool and see if its better.
I have Acer nitro 5 with RX560X

[Haxk20]

Also weirdly enough my xrandr --props reports vrr_capable in HDMI section and not my eDP.

https://pastebin.com/CWHx5kzE

[Venemo]

Don't expect a fix for this for Polaris GPUs, I suspect it's a hardware flaw. Get yourself a script that watches if maximum VRAM pstate is enforced and start it automatically as root via your init solution (systemd ).
There are lots of reports for flickering with Polaris with high refresh rate or dual monitor setups. I also have this issue on Windows, though to a much lesser extent.

It is something that can be worked around by manually setting the GPU clocks, see the linked bugreport for details.
And yes it can be fixed: the amdgpu driver should by itself figure out the correct clock.

I think this isn't a hardware defect, but if it is, the driver should still workaround it by setting the correct clock.

[tuxd3v]

Good news
It would be nice to compare also the power consumption, to see if there are any changes.