AMD Releases R300 3D Register Guide

[signor_rossi]

Most of powersaving options should already be supported for X600 (R4xx) chipset (man radeon and look for anythings with clock in the name). I believe Powerplay was introduced with X1xxx (R5XX) and is part of atombios. Note that Matthew Garrett also have a couple of nice powersaving tricks available for r5xx.

X600 is an RV380 chip IIRC and therefore Pre-ATOM (last time I asked a developer clarified that). This is what I get from aticonfig --lsp:

[val@tux ~]$ aticonfig --lsp

    core/mem      [flags]
-----------------
  1: 105/122 MHz  [low voltage]
* 2: 398/250 MHz  [default state]

IIRC it 'low voltage' is the important thing fglrx does and radeon didn't last time I tried, not only lowering the clock but also lowering the voltage and do some PCI powersaving stuff.
This is what I get for PowerPlay from aticonfig -h:

POWERplay Options:
  Following options will not change the config file. 
  These options will be effective immediately. Other options on 
  the same command line will be ignored.                        
  --lsp, --list-powerstates                                     
        Print information about power states and exit.          
  --set-powerstate=NUMBER                                       
        Set a power state listed by --list-powerstates.         
  --auto-powerstates=on|off                                     
        Enable/disable automatic transitions between battery and performance
        modes on AC/DC transitions. This automatic mode is enabled by default,
        and may compete with atieventsd style power management.

It is just that switching between fglrx and radeon is not trivial on Arch (atm I would have to upgrade to xorg-server-1.6 to try xf86-video-ati 6.12.2) so I wanted not to try radeon only out of the blue and asked about the state of affairs again...

Thanks for the response.


EDIT: Is that was I was looking for?
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=NzIwNg

So how would I get this version of the radeon driver?

BIG EDIT: I think I will ask further question in the discussion of the article I linked to. Thanks!

[glisse]

EDIT: Is that was I was looking for?
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=NzIwNg

So I would have to check out from git?

aticonfig is useless with opensource driver, there is a tool called radeontool which should be somewhere on the net and maybe even available through your distribution which gives you same option as aticonfig ie to lower gpu & ram frequency and also enable other powersaving options. It's also available in lastest ddx through Xorg configuration (thus needing X restart each time you want to change configuration).