Linux 5.16 Has A Nice Performance Gift For AMD Ryzen Laptops With Radeon Graphics

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 5.16 Has A Nice Performance Gift For AMD Ryzen Laptops With Radeon Graphics

For those making use of integrated Radeon Vega-based graphics with modern Ryzen laptops at least, the Linux 5.16 kernel is offering some nice performance gains noticed recently as part of the Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U benchmarking with the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen2. Here is a look at the AMD Radeon Graphics performance for that Zen 3 laptop across varying Mesa and Linux kernel versions while then expanding the comparison to multiple devices given the Linux 5.16 performance boost.

https://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=30803

[deusexmachina]

The most exciting part about 5.16+ is the fixes for this laptops sleep system. So many people are suffering from these bugs (a lot of power usage in s3, no ability to use s0ix):

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Other-Linux-Discussions/Linux-S0ix-support-on-AMD-platforms/m-p/5098254

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Other-Linux-Discussions/T14-T14s-X13-G1-AMD-Linux-S3-standby-battery-drain-improvements/m-p/5098252

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Ubuntu/Does-Thinkpad-X1-Extreme-support-S3-sleep-under-linux/m-p/4247014?

[-MacNuke-]

My only wish would be a bugfix for the driver crash when using VA-API https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/5359

[oleid]

My only wish would be a bugfix for the driver crash when using VA-API https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/5359

Can va-api be used nowadays on wayland?

[-MacNuke-]

Can va-api be used nowadays on wayland?

Sure. I am using Wayland with VA-API for years now. FireFox got VA-API support under Wayland one and a half year ago and it worked in other players before that.

[marlock]

zero detected improvements on discrete GPUs and no announced performance improvements... yet such a huge jump in laptop perf!

this is a bit suggestive of improved power-efficiency freeing up the thermal envelope to squeeze more cpu+gpu performance before hitting thermal throttle, isn't it?

didn't this kernel include some work on AMD's cpu governor?

[perpetually high]

didn't this kernel include some work on AMD's cpu governor?

5.16 does include the amd-pstate governor, but it's disabled by default on Ubuntu, for example. YMMV on your distro.

You can check if your config contains CONFIG_X86_AMD_PSTATE

If you are running 5.16 with amd-pstate enabled, you can add the following to your GRUB:

amd_pstate.enable=1 amd_pstate.shared_mem=1

Update grub, reboot, and verify:

$ dmesg | grep -i pstate
[ 3.789677] powernow_k8: WTF driver: amd-pstate

$ cpufreq-info | grep 'amd-pstate'
driver: amd-pstate

5.16 does include the new futex patches and it's enabled by default (relevant config entries are CONFIG_FUTEX=y and CONFIG_FUTEX_PI=y)

I also notcied when looking at a steam log, that the previous futex2 patches on 5.15.x are no longer valid and turned off by Steam:

fsync: old futex2 patches detected, disabling.
esync: up and running.

With the new futex in 5.16, you should see this now:

fsync: up and running.

So be on the lookout for those on your system.

[gfunk]

The most exciting part about 5.16+ is the fixes for this laptops sleep system. So many people are suffering from these bugs (a lot of power usage in s3, no ability to use s0ix):

I have a T14, I play games and I have sleep and battery drain issues.. So happy to see these improvements! I'm on pop OS though which is not really designed for using newer kernels

[Girolamo_Cavazzoni]

I did run some benchmarks on a completely different laptop featuring a Ryzen 5 5500U. That Zen 3 laptop too is seeing nice uplift on Linux 5.16 across various graphics tests

As far as I know Ryzen 5 5500 is a Zen 2 APU. Just for clarification. Let's hope there are some improvements with Zen and Zen+, too.

[partcyborg]

I have a T14, I play games and I have sleep and battery drain issues.. So happy to see these improvements! I'm on pop OS though which is not really designed for using newer kernels

That's not how Linux works. A distribution can't be "designed" for a specific kernel version. Pop OS may not provide prebuilt kernel packages for the latest kernel version, but there is literally nothing stopping you from compiling and installing your own from vanilla sources. Provided you do this correctly it would work absolutely fine