More Radeon Power Management Improvements

[HokTar]

I think it was mentioned in the article that they go against drm-next-radeon.

On the other hand I kinda feel like power management will still take a lot of time so probably it will be decent around the end of the year.

What I don't get is why didn't AMD appoint a guy from their pm department to help out here? Seriously, he/she would have already been aware of 80% of the problems and knew the best solution without further thinking...

[smitty3268]

What I don't get is why didn't AMD appoint a guy from their pm department to help out here? Seriously, he/she would have already been aware of 80% of the problems and knew the best solution without further thinking...

Well, they probably fixed this 6 months ago but have been waiting on legal to approve it ever since, so someone else just stepped up and fixed it in the meantime. Just kidding, AMD...

The blog mentions that AMD has done a lot more in terms of opening up the PM specs than their competition, so I don't think we can complain too much. Most of the work probably would have been trial and error until it started working even if they had assigned someone to help.

[netkas]

I just tried latest radeon-drm-testing branch where all these patches seems to be already

and i have screen bouncing/flashing on reclocking.

[netkas]

I just tried latest radeon-drm-testing branch where all these patches seems to be already

and i have screen bouncing/flashing on reclocking.

p.s. hd4850

[LiquidAcid]

Have to try this out. The biggest problem with my HD4570 is the fan sound.

I hope with reduced clock and voltage it'll become quiet again like on Windows when idling.

[waucka]

AMD's policy on documentation is the reason I try to avoid Intel hardware these days. It's pretty easy on the desktop (both of my newer desktop machines are all AMD), but not so much on notebooks/netbooks. I really wish I could buy a notebook with an AMD processor, an AMD GPU, a non-Broadcom wifi chipset (preferably Atheros), and no Windows. Sadly, neither System76 nor zareason sell AMD notebooks, and zareason only has one AMD desktop.

I guess the only fix for this is to lobby for laws requiring hardware vendors to make a preinstalled OS optional. Also, it would be nice if they were compelled to disclose what things like "Dell Wireless" or "Airport Extreme" really are. I want to know what it is before I buy it!

[HokTar]

AMD's policy on documentation is the reason I try to avoid Intel hardware these days. It's pretty easy on the desktop (both of my newer desktop machines are all AMD), but not so much on notebooks/netbooks. I really wish I could buy a notebook with an AMD processor, an AMD GPU, a non-Broadcom wifi chipset (preferably Atheros), and no Windows. Sadly, neither System76 nor zareason sell AMD notebooks, and zareason only has one AMD desktop.

I guess the only fix for this is to lobby for laws requiring hardware vendors to make a preinstalled OS optional. Also, it would be nice if they were compelled to disclose what things like "Dell Wireless" or "Airport Extreme" really are. I want to know what it is before I buy it!

You should check out the notebooks from Asus. They have some AMD-only machines and that also means Atheros. Actually, I'm writing from such a "beast", an N51Tp, but it is a year old and is not sold anymore. The newer version is the N60Dp I think.

[HokTar]

Here you are!

[monraaf]

Nice. I tested with HD 5750. After enabling dynpm GPU immediately switched to lowest state, giving a reduction in power consumption of 24 watts, that's only 7 watt short of fglrx. Wasn't able to further test how well dynpm behaves though, for that I need something to actually use the command processor i.e. acceleration (which is still missing for Evergreen), for now it just stays in the lowest power mode.

[Adarion]

Awesome! Finally PM is getting the kicks. I so wish it would be ported back / included in 2.6.34. Don't want to wait so long again to use these features. In my AMD 4850e box the dedicated R600 eats the main part of power so it'd be nice to have savings here.