Help building latest radeon driver

[glock24]

I want to try the latest radeon driver, but don't know where to start. Is there a guide to build the driver? What are required steps and dependencies? I'm using Kubuntu 9.04 and a Mobility HD3650 if that matters.

Thanks.

[agd5f]

basic guide:
http://www.botchco.com/agd5f/?page_id=2

[glock24]

Thanks, that worked. I'm having some video corruption though, mostly in the cursor and icons.

"ForceLowPowerMode" seems to work, as the temperature is within normal. What does "ClockGating" do?

[agd5f]

Thanks, that worked. I'm having some video corruption though, mostly in the cursor and icons.

Probably DFS related. Does:
Option "EXANoDownloadFromScreen"
fix it?

"ForceLowPowerMode" seems to work, as the temperature is within normal. What does "ClockGating" do?

Allows the chip to turn off the clock to blocks on the chip when they are not in use to save power.

[glock24]

Yep,

Option "EXANoDownloadFromScreen"

fixed the video corruption.

[glock24]

I was testing power consumption with fglrx and the radeon driver; with fglrx the power consumption is ~18W on battery, as reported by powertop.

Using the radeon driver with "ClockGating" and "ForceLowPowerMode" to "on", the power usage reported by powertop is ~23W. I think it's not bad, but could be much better.

BTW, is there any way to know the actual clock of the GPU?

[agd5f]

I was testing power consumption with fglrx and the radeon driver; with fglrx the power consumption is ~18W on battery, as reported by powertop.

Using the radeon driver with "ClockGating" and "ForceLowPowerMode" to "on", the power usage reported by powertop is ~23W. I think it's not bad, but could be much better.

BTW, is there any way to know the actual clock of the GPU?

For ForceLowPower mode, it's half of your default clock which is printed in the xorg log. For the DynamicPM option, the clock is reduced to 1/4 of the default clock when DPMS is active. This patch will print the values when DynamicPM kicks in:
http://www.botchco.com/alex/xorg/print_clock_pm.diff

[glock24]

I've managed to slash some 3-4W editing radeon_pm.c and lowering the clock from 1/2 to 1/4 with "ForceLowPowerMode". Have not seen any adverse consequences by doing so.

[glock24]

Have been using the radeon driver for over a week, and I'm pleased, but I've noticed something that makes it almost unusable: while browsing with Firefox some web pages with flash, the scrolling performance is horrible, feels like using software rendering on a 386 to play nexuiz :P

This does not happen on all sites with flash though. I'm using Kubuntu 9.04 AMD64 with kernel 2.6.30-rc6 and latest radeon from git. Flash player is latest 64bit version from adobe.

[bridgman]

Does putting the GPU back to full speed help with those pages ? Probably not the problem but easy to check...