AMD's RadeonSI Driver Finally Enables OpenGL 4.6 But You Need To First Enable NIR

[ObiWan]

just use radeonsi_enable_nir=true as environmental variable, no need for editing drirc

>radeonsi_enable_nir=true glxinfo | grep OpenGL
ATTENTION: default value of option radeonsi_enable_nir overridden by environment.
OpenGL vendor string: X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: AMD NAVI10 (DRM 3.35.0, 5.4.0-1, LLVM 10.0.0)
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.6 (Core Profile) Mesa 20.0.0-devel (git-52aadbfd04)
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.60
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 20.0.0-devel (git-52aadbfd04)
OpenGL shading language version string: 4.60
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL profile mask: compatibility profile
OpenGL extensions:
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.2 Mesa 20.0.0-devel (git-52aadbfd04)
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.20
OpenGL ES profile extensions:

[FireBurn]

just use radeonsi_enable_nir=true as environmental variable, no need for editing drirc

>radeonsi_enable_nir=true glxinfo | grep OpenGL
ATTENTION: default value of option radeonsi_enable_nir overridden by environment.
OpenGL vendor string: X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: AMD NAVI10 (DRM 3.35.0, 5.4.0-1, LLVM 10.0.0)
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.6 (Core Profile) Mesa 20.0.0-devel (git-52aadbfd04)
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.60
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 20.0.0-devel (git-52aadbfd04)
OpenGL shading language version string: 4.60
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL profile mask: compatibility profile
OpenGL extensions:
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.2 Mesa 20.0.0-devel (git-52aadbfd04)
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.20
OpenGL ES profile extensions:

Cheers, didn't know it had changed

[MrCooper]

Cheers, didn't know it had changed

It‘s always been possible to override driconf options with environment variables of the same name.

[nuetzel]

They removed the nir debug environment variable for some unknown reason. You have to set drirc.

You only have to set:

radeonsi_enable_nir=true (bash / /etc/environment) or
setenv radeonsi_enable_nir=true (tcsh)

Thanks for your hint!

[puleglot]

radeonsi_enable_nir=true (bash / /etc/environment)

This can be set in ~/.pam_environment as well:

radeonsi_enable_nir       DEFAULT=true

[perpetually high]

Thank you to the commenters. I was also setting nir via ~/.drirc and didn't realize it wasn't being turned on.

In addition to the ~/.pam_environment file (which I didn't know about thanks), to avoid writing to /etc/environment, you can throw a script in /etc/profile.d/, call it env.sh, or whatever you want. That env.sh can also just be a symbolic link to another file (say a cloud backed up file, so you could do ln -s ~/Dropbox/env.sh /etc/profile.d/env.sh and on every boot you'll have those variables set. (edit: the format in this env.sh should be: export radeonsi_enable_nir=true)

[R41N3R]

Yeah, this NIR environment variable things was a bit unfortunate... don't know how many test have been done under the wrong assumption when this changed silently to radeonsi_enable_nir=true. But good that it works now again :-)

glxinfo -B
name of display: :1
ATTENTION: default value of option radeonsi_enable_nir overridden by environment.

[xcom]

Hello!

For CIV 6
radeonsi_enable_nir=true is enabled by default?

[smitty3268]

Hello!

For CIV 6
radeonsi_enable_nir=true is enabled by default?

Yes, that's done via an app profile because the TGSI backend was broken for that game.