ATI Gets Dynamic Power Management & Profiles Too

[Boerkel]

lol, i don't agree with you. It's all about motivation. :P My brother has dyslexia, but now he has a wellpayed job and he doesnt seem to be a robot either. Sure, our school system isn't the best, but you sound like it would the worst on planet...


But really thats offtopic. We shouldn't talk about school when we can talk about Dynamic Power Management on open ati drivers. :P I'm really excited.

[nanonyme]

Top scores in that study, yet no ability to do maths without a calculator.

Then again, things you can do with a calculator are pretty trivial anyway should they lean towards a more mathematical education later on.

[pingufunkybeat]

OK, I've finally had time to play around a bit. How do I test whether PM is working?

I have drm-radeon-testing from today, and I've passed radeon.dynpm=1 to the kernel.

I have the Mesa, libdrm and ddx from git.

dmesg says:

[    0.536165] [drm] Internal thermal controller with fan control
[    0.536329] [drm] radeon: power management initialized

But it also says this (much later):

[  441.708267] You have old & broken userspace please consider updating mesa

This is what happens:

# echo profile > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method 
# echo default > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile
# cat /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/temp1_input 
69000

# echo low > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile

***** wait for a while... *****

# cat /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/temp1_input
62000

So, it seems to be working. It's not a huge difference, but it's a fanless card, so I guess it does run a bit hot in general.

# echo dynpm > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method
# cat /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/temp1_input
60000

# glxgears
3203 frames in 5.0 seconds = 640.533 FPS
3735 frames in 5.0 seconds = 746.953 FPS
3984 frames in 5.0 seconds = 796.798 FPS
3991 frames in 5.0 seconds = 798.084 FPS
4217 frames in 5.0 seconds = 843.314 FPS
3589 frames in 5.0 seconds = 717.598 FPS
3459 frames in 5.0 seconds = 691.586 FPS
4012 frames in 5.0 seconds = 802.205 FPS
3649 frames in 5.0 seconds = 729.521 FPS
3484 frames in 5.0 seconds = 696.674 FPS
4091 frames in 5.0 seconds = 817.972 FPS

*** flicker flicker flicker ***

# cat /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/temp1_input 
65000

So, it seems to be working. There is flicker while reclocking, and the glxgears numbers are a bit odd, as if it keeps reclocking up and down. I know it's not a benchmark, it was easier to check than OpenArena or something.

[pingufunkybeat]

BTW, I get jerky mouse with dynpm, it goes away when I switch to profile pm.

[d2kx]

BTW, I get jerky mouse with dynpm, it goes away when I switch to profile pm.

This a radeon pm bug? I have my mouse going away after 2-3 seconds when I don't move it using Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick"-daily.

[pingufunkybeat]

I don't know if it's related to radeon pm, I just notice that the mouse cursor sticks at different parts of the screen when dynamic powersaving is activated (dynpm on). This does not happen when I use profiles (dynpm off). It didn't happen with the 2.6.34 kernel either. I don't know, maybe it's reclocking too often?