A Possible Workaround For AMD APUs With Stability Issues On Recent Kernels

While we have found recent Linux kernels paired with latest motherboard BIOS releases to work out generally well for recent AMD APUs, not everyone has been having a trouble-free experience on recent kernels. But an affected user has discovered a possible workaround if hitting stability issues.

There has been a bug report since October stemming from graphics ring timeouts since Linux 5.2 and 5.3 kernels with multiple users affected. Those ring timeouts ultimately lead to graphics no longer functioning until rebooting the system.

The workaround discovered by a user is booting with amdgpu.noretry=0 as a kernel module parameter for AMDGPU. This comes after AMD set no-retry as the default in an effort to enhance performance by disabling retry faults.

Judging from this Gitlab issue, the amdgpu.noretry=0 and an affected user who alerted me to that ticket, it seems to be helping AMD APU owners on Linux ~5.4 that had been hitting stability issues. So should you be affected, give that option a whirl and chime in if it helped your situation.