It's Really Worthwhile For AMDGPU Users On Ubuntu 16.04 To Upgrade Their Kernel, Mesa

[Silverthorn]

Makes sense... I think the change to pick up the -k microcode versions only arrived in 4.8.



Not sure about that, give me a minute to check the code...

EDIT - I think that error message about mixing versions is a bit misleading. The driver can load both new (lower case) and old (upper case) microcode... at the end of loading it checks the number of new images it loaded against the number it should have (8 in this case) and prints that error message if the right number of new ucode images were not loaded.

Also AFAIK that "Direct firmware load..." message means that the userspace code was not able to find the file.

So just checking... (a) do you have hawaii_k_smc.bin in /lib/firmware/radeon, and (b) are you using/needing an initrd and if so has that been updated ?

(a) Yes, I have it. I even copied the complete radeon folder from linux firmware git just in case.
(b) Do not know. This is pretty much a standard (X)Ubuntu install with kernel from kernel-ppa/mainline and padoka PPA as mentioned in the article.

I read some of the related code and all of the 8 files requested files can be found in /lib/firmware/radeon/. It is a bit confusing how some of the error messages are missing, but maybe I somehow overlooked them when I checked dmesg.

[bridgman]

I read some of the related code and all of the 8 files requested files can be found in /lib/firmware/radeon/. It is a bit confusing how some of the error messages are missing, but maybe I somehow overlooked them when I checked dmesg.

Could you pastebin your dmesg output somewhere ?

[Silverthorn]

Could you pastebin your dmesg output somewhere ?

This time after installing the release candidate kernel to get the output from dmesg the kernel was able to load the firmware and giving me the full OpenGL support. There have been no other changes made to the system apart from removing and now installing the new kernel. No updates, no files changes. Quite unexpected. Annoyingly this this means I can no longer reproduce the error and will most likely not be able to find the cause behind it.

Thank you for the assistance and the time spent bridgman and dungeon.

[dungeon]

OK then seems just initramfs was not updated, so does not taken new firmaware into account.

[Dr. Righteous]

I have a GCN 1.0 (SI) (7770M) chip, and I'm getting similar performance improvements over the last 2 months. running git /llvm with stable 4.7.2 and the radeon driver (as amdgpu doesn't work yet on it)

I'm looking at a kernel upgrade; I have a HD7870 and on Kernel 4.4 performance is lack luster.
Some games like Metro 2033 won't run on this version either. And what ticks me off is the AMDGPU PRO drivers don't support my card. This is my main system and I use it to work so I'm going to back up everything and attempt the Kernel upgrade.

[DIRT]

DIRT there is "wine-gaming-nine" aur pkgbuild (it's wine-staging+nine) or wine-nine binary form lcarlier's mesa-git repo if you prefer

Basically i was wanting something that doesn't have to compile on my system.

[frosth]

DIRT, so, wine-nine pkg from mesa-git repo is binary file, but it won't work with mesa from manjaro. You need build mesa-git or build wine-nine In arch build mesa is piece of cake but this is manjaro and his "mhwd-thing" . You may use force and install mesa from mesa-git repo but it will easly break your system.

[grigi]

I'm looking at a kernel upgrade; I have a HD7870 and on Kernel 4.4 performance is lack luster.
Some games like Metro 2033 won't run on this version either. And what ticks me off is the AMDGPU PRO drivers don't support my card. This is my main system and I use it to work so I'm going to back up everything and attempt the Kernel upgrade.

I actually just yesterday loaded up Metro 2033 again, and it immediately semi-hung. I pulled the latest git code for llvm/mesa again, and then tried it, and it worked much better than it did under Catalyst. I suppose there is a downside with the super-fast development pace, regressions creep in, and then get fixed, and the cycle continues.
I could run it at "high" @ 1920x1080 (without AA), and it was running consistently over 40fps, which is more than fast enough for that game. (this on a 512@675Mhz card, likely your 7870 is ~3x faster, so you should be able to up settings even more)

I think I had to run kernel 4.6 to get GL4.3 to work on my card at all.
I suspect a power regression whilst sleeping has been introduced with kernel 4.7, and apparently fixed with 4.8 again. Soon I'll stick to stable releases again when the massive progress slows down again.

[Dr. Righteous]

I actually just yesterday loaded up Metro 2033 again, and it immediately semi-hung. I pulled the latest git code for llvm/mesa again, and then tried it, and it worked much better than it did under Catalyst. I suppose there is a downside with the super-fast development pace, regressions creep in, and then get fixed, and the cycle continues.
I could run it at "high" @ 1920x1080 (without AA), and it was running consistently over 40fps, which is more than fast enough for that game. (this on a 512@675Mhz card, likely your 7870 is ~3x faster, so you should be able to up settings even more)

I think I had to run kernel 4.6 to get GL4.3 to work on my card at all.
I suspect a power regression whilst sleeping has been introduced with kernel 4.7, and apparently fixed with 4.8 again. Soon I'll stick to stable releases again when the massive progress slows down again.

Yeah, the 7870 is a rocking card for 1080p gaming. I really don't have any desire to upgrade for performance; but it seems AMD won't support it for Linux.

Well, not having a whole lot of luck getting Mesa upgraded.
I successfully upgraded to the 4.8 kernel but when I check on the openGL version with glxinfo I get 3.0 Mesa 11.2. The exact same as Kernel 4.4
What could I be doing wrong? I've added the mesa PPAs; still shows no upgrade.

The card again is a HD 7870.
Xubuntu 16.04 LTS.
Kernel 4.8.

[Dr. Righteous]

Here is what I see:

todd@AMD8Core:~$ glxinfo | grep OpenGL
OpenGL vendor string: X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD PITCAIRN (DRM 2.46.0, LLVM 3.8.0)
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.1 (Core Profile) Mesa 11.2.0
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.10
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 11.2.0
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL extensions:
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.0 Mesa 11.2.0
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.00
OpenGL ES profile extensions: