X.Org ATI Driver Supports New Power Options

[bridgman]

The patch adds log entries on every clock change, so the log file would grow without limit. I don't know "how many is too many" but continuously logging events is generally frowned on unless you have a logging system which only keeps the last N entries.

[oibaf]

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

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

Why not applying this patch upstream?

[bridgman]

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?

The fglrx driver has kernel code that dynamically adjusts clock frequencies based on 2D and 3D load. The open drivers are still doing power management in the user-space driver so they can't do load-based clock switching yet. Before Alex added the recent power management options the open drivers ran the chip at full speed, while fglrx was downclocking it most of the time to save power. Using the ForceLowPowerMode option slows down the engine clock and should make the power consumption and heat generation more like fglrx.

Once the kms/mm and 6xx/7xx 3D work in the kernel driver (drm) settles down and the APIs stabilize I imagine you'll see power management code move into the kernel and become more "dynamic". Anyways, not a bug, just lack of an architectural feature.

[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?

[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.

[moomoo]

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

[bugmenot]

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

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

[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 ?

[elanthis]

Use the patch command, e.g.

patch -p1 < print_click_pm.diff

inside of the xorg source tree, then recompile.

[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?