AMDGPU Linux Driver Enabling FreeSync Video By Default, Improved Power Savings

AMD's open-source Linux graphics driver engineers have out a rather significant set of patches this week to their display code "DC" for the AMDGPU kernel graphics driver.

Back in 2020 AMD introduced a FreeSync Video mode so user-space can request a FreeSync compatible video mode and does not trigger blanking. Initially it required setting the "amdgpu.experimental_freesync_video=1" kernel module parameter to activate while in Linux 5.18 tried to enable it by default before they ended up reverting it due to regressions.

Now though with AMD's newest patches -- which will likely be mainlined for the Linux 6.5 kernel -- FreeSync Video by default is having another go. A previously reported hang and corruption issue on eDP panels have now been resolved, so it's believed safe to enable this feature out-of-the-box.

This week's AMDGPU DC patches also bring performance improvements, power saving optimizations, fixing screen flashing on high resolution displays, and bug fixes to eliminate possible hangs or crashes in different cases.

Overall this week's DC patches is a nice set of improvements to the AMDGPU display handling that should work their way to the Linux 6.5 kernel.