X.Org ATI Driver Supports New Power Options

[dungeon]

Oh yes it goes down with that test, but it is again slightly overclocked. I was tried ForceLowPowerMode, maybe that is better for me: gpu is downclocked at static 50 %, 2D seems to be not affected (gtkperf results) Mesa/DRI is little slowed down but works good.

[agd5f]

ok, i can confirm it does work, strange it doesnt change frequency when dpms is called with vbetool, like i was doing. sorry, my mistake.

Don't use vbetool. It goes behind the driver's back and messes with the hardware directly.

The only thing strange is that, before the last fix, when i was on batery mode, the clock WAS INDEED changing. any explanation on that one? just curious? i know it must be the bios, but it wasnt changing anything before toay rs482 clockgating fix, and i have this laptop for 3 years

The logic was broken so the chip entered a low power mode on startup rather then dpms, perhaps that's what you were seeing.

[signor_rossi]

Hi again.
I did some measurements on battery power now. So powertop shows me 19.5W power consumption with ForceLowPowerMode enabled and 22.7 with FLPM disabled while the system idles.
Seems it saves me around 3W in that scenario.
The machine is a HP nx8220 with a X600 Mobility RV380 (I use it mostly on AC power with a second monitor attached) and I must say that it seems that this driver (radeon, I used fglrx before) is almost 100% usable for me and works better than fglrx now on my laptop, great work! Google Earth works better than any time before and direct rendering also works, I only got problems with xv, but the X11 video overlay is fast enough. xv Radeon Video Overlay gives me some corruption under the cursor and on the kde panel (all tested with dual head) and xv Radeon Textured Video seems to be affected by a hardware limitation of my GPU on the second screen (OpenGL has the limitation of the overlay size that cannot be bigger than 25xx horizontally something, but my combined monitors are wider). Or I am missing an xorg.conf option. EXA also gives me tearing on both screens when enabled, but I don't need it it seems, XAA works good.
Suspend and hibernate also give problems, but that almost certainly aren't driver related (machine is a bitch). Hibernate works from console and suspend works from X.
Hibernate from X doesn't start X again and just hangs after loading the image with a blinking cursor, have to turn the machine off with the power button and suspend from console gives me garbage on the screen after resume, fortunately no hardlock and keyboard till responding.

SignorRossi.

EDIT: Without this 'Option "EXAVSync" "on"' in my xorg.conf xv Radeon Video Overlay seems to work flawlessy even with EXA as acceleration method. Impressive!

[alec]

This all is excellent news! I will try it out when I have a chance.

[oibaf]

agd5f: why not enabling DynamicPM and maybe also ClockGating by default so that all users can benefit from the power saving?

[agd5f]

agd5f: why not enabling DynamicPM and maybe also ClockGating by default so that all users can benefit from the power saving?

I hope to eventually, but I want to get the bugs worked out first. So please test and report bugs to https://bugs.freedesktop.org

[glock24]

sometimes, it doesn't even work /with/ fglrx

This is true! It does not work on my HD3650.

[bridgman]

Are you talking about reading GPU temperature or the new power management options ?

[glock24]

Are you talking about reading GPU temperature or the new power management options ?

Neither works

[agd5f]

Neither works

Well, there's no support for reading the temperature yet, but the basic power management stuff should work. When you say power management doesn't work what do you mean? System locks up? The DynamicPM option only switches to a lower power mode when your displays are blanked. The ForceLowPowerMode option should force your chip into a lower power state all the time.