Possible R9 Nano Powerplay Regression with Dota 2

[charlie]

Dota 2 FPS is ~10 and behaves like it is in software rendering mode or the R9 Nano is not reclocking whether in opengl or vulkan rendering. Also, the Nano, is definately not reclocking in Dota 2 based upon the lack of loud coil whine that I hear when Portal is running. Portal behaves normally.

glxinfo and Xorg.0.log reports no issues and Direct Rendering is enabled. I've tried git kernels: drm-next-4.10-wip and drm-fixes-4.9 with no change in the issue. I might have tried drm-fixes-4.8 also....

Note: This card is watercooled and lacks a fan. I am wondering if some software is not allowing the card to reclock if it detects no fan...
Software git's used: mesa, llvm, lld, x, drm-next-4.10-wip

[vein]

Dota 2 FPS is ~10 and behaves like it is in software rendering mode or the R9 Nano is not reclocking whether in opengl or vulkan rendering. Also, the Nano, is definately not reclocking in Dota 2 based upon the lack of loud coil whine that I hear when Portal is running. Portal behaves normally.

glxinfo and Xorg.0.log reports no issues and Direct Rendering is enabled. I've tried git kernels: drm-next-4.10-wip and drm-fixes-4.9 with no change in the issue. I might have tried drm-fixes-4.8 also....

Note: This card is watercooled and lacks a fan. I am wondering if some software is not allowing the card to reclock if it detects no fan...
Software git's used: mesa, llvm, lld, x, drm-next-4.10-wip

Hmm...got not problems here and running on a nano with a fan...

[charlie]

Is it possible to manually set the GPU frequency?

[charlie]

Hmm...got not problems here and running on a nano with a fan...

Ask your mom to hold her vacuum cleaner to the back of the Nano air exhaust after you disconnect the fan. Then start up Dota 2 and see if the frame rate is normal. That way we can tell if my clocking issues might be fan related. Thanks.

[charlie]

Recently there was a patch for amdgpu kernel driver that disables powerplay if there is no fan.

Thanks for the info. Do you know where I can find the patch so I can reverse it? I will probably file a bug report asking for the same thing anyway.

[agd5f]

Here is one:

https://cgit.freedesktop.org/~agd5f/linux/commit/drivers/gpu/drm/amd?h=drm-next-4.10-wip&id=d9ddf9efcac80064be03325a7ef8d896286c151a

That patch does not disable powerplay. It just returns an error if the user tries to check the fan speed and there is no fan.

[haagch]

Is it possible to manually set the GPU frequency?

echo manual > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_force_performance_level
echo 7 > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/pp_dpm_sclk

check with cat /sys/class/drm/card0/device/pp_dpm_sclk how many performance levels you have.
There's also /sys/class/drm/card0/device/pp_dpm_mclk for memory clock.

[charlie]

Solved.

Solution--reconfigure kernel: "make menuconfig"/Bus options/PCI support/PCI Express Port Bus support/PCI Express ASPM control/Default ASPM policy (set to "Performance")

The "Default ASPM policy" was set to "BIOS default". There was a night and day performance difference in my games after the change.

I deduced there was something wrong with my bios or kernel configurations after I found that AMD Powerplay was reclocking properly and after reverting fan patches, trying older kernels, mesa, llvm and X.

Thanks to the preceeding posts I was able to reach this solution.