AMD Wires Up OverDrive Overclocking For Newer RDNA3 GPUs On Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Wires Up OverDrive Overclocking For Newer RDNA3 GPUs On Linux

For those interested in GPU overclocking, AMD has posted the patches for implementing the "legacy" OverDrive overclocking infrastructure for newer SMU13-based Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards with the AMDGPU open-source Linux kernel driver...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-OverDrive-SMU13-RDNA3

[kiffmet]

Overclocking support has become an utter joke compared to the freedoms that were axiomatically provided with earlier GPUs up to RDNA1. Now everything is locked down with artificial firmware limits and cryptographic signatures to make sure that even people who know what they're doing can't do anything.

You want 100Mhz more on your VRAM? Too bad, should have bought the xx50XT, which allows to use the same memory chips with higher clockspeeds. Increase powerlimits beyond bios defaults? Hell no, but if you're lucky you can hack the Linux kernel mode driver. Using a fully custom powerplay table, how dare you?! - Rot in safe mode!

As a tech enthusiast, the tinkering factor was a big part in my purchasing decision. R9 290, RX580, Vega 56 MBA, 5700 XT - all of them were a great experience due to the freedoms they granted and due to the OOTB Linux support. This added so much additional value. But no, since RDNA2 "gotta be a sleazebag like NVIDIA" seems to be the motto.

/rant

[ezst036]

....The AMD OverDrive GPU overclocking support on Linux remains accessible via sysfs, so it's not exactly user-friendly without any official AMD Linux graphics driver control panel / GUI.......[/URL]

Is that so?

It's items like this where it almost seems like AMD wants to irk people. They give us great features then no sane way to use them as normal human beings. AMD needs to wake up and realize that we aren't all sitting around waiting to tweak our jumper switches to get a half voltage increase. This is the 21st century. Need GUI now!

That kind of makes this patch a waste for all but about 5 people. I'm not dinking around with sysfs. I have better things to do. AMD should be providing for this. It's pathetic.

[qlum]

Indeed, the situation isn't great right now.
Even fan control is non functional on linux: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/2402
It really does need quite a bit of work.

[slalomsk8er]

This is the 21st century. Need GUI now!

That kind of makes this patch a waste for all but about 5 people. I'm not dinking around with sysfs. I have better things to do. AMD should be providing for this. It's pathetic.

If I would write a tool, say a GUI, to manage this, I would like to use a sysfs interface to change the setting in the backend - it's lot easier then having to talk directly to the PCI device

[dreamcat4]

As a tech enthusiast, the tinkering factor was a big part in my purchasing decision. R9 290, RX580, Vega 56 MBA, 5700 XT - all of them were a great
/rant

ah ok... so can you recommend any specific ultilities for 5700xt overclocking on linux? I have just got one here, but did not get around to investigating the overclocking yet. So any tips would be grateful for.

Downloaded a few utilities, but they are not familiar tools and have not opened / tried yet. Also am weak on choosing a benchmarking program(s) or game(s) for doing benchmarks. Whether to bother try undervolting this card (or not), etc.

[kiffmet]

dreamcat4
First things first: You need to add

amdgpu.ppfeaturemask=0xfffd7fff

to your kernel commandline, regenerate your boodloader's config file and reboot - this is needed, such that overclocking gets permitted by the driver in the first place.

If you want to use a GUI, then CoreCtrl (interacts with Overdrive) and powerupp are the way to go (powerupp interacts with Powerplay Tables, requires upp).

python3 -m pip install --user git+https://github.com/sibradzic/upp.git

As a side note, CoreCtrl looks and behaves a lot like the AMD Adrenalin control center on Windows. It can also be used for CPU tuning and will probably change the CPU frequency scaling driver from 'schedutil' to something else, so you may want to adjust that back to 'schedutil' again, before saving/applying your first profile - this is only an issue on first run.

I'm fine with the file-based sysfs interface (/sys/class/drm/card#/device/pp_od_clk_voltage), as it's super simple [you only need 'cat', 'echo' and the ' >' (redirection) operator] for dialing in an overclock and I made a script to automatically apply it when I log in.

That script I have made, is for RDNA2, but it should explain how to use the interface quite nicely, aswell as provide some documentation in the form of comments. It should easily be adaptable for RDNA1 (the original version was for Vega64) with the infos provided in the link to the sysfs interface documentation, and can also be used to restore default settings, change powerlimit and monitor temps.

[Bratkartoffel]

ah ok... so can you recommend any specific ultilities for 5700xt overclocking on linux? I have just got one here, but did not get around to investigating the overclocking yet. So any tips would be grateful for.

Downloaded a few utilities, but they are not familiar tools and have not opened / tried yet. Also am weak on choosing a benchmarking program(s) or game(s) for doing benchmarks. Whether to bother try undervolting this card (or not), etc.

CoreControl works well, just follow the setup instructions. It is quite handy for undervolting and setting power limits.
Total War Warhammer 2 is great for benchmarking, you can use MangoHud for deeper analysis of frametimes etc.

[Goddard]

Finally, they really need to start having this stuff ready at launch.

[shmerl]

If that is legacy, what is the new way of overclocking?