The Big RadeonSI Performance Patch To Land In Linux 3.13

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Big RadeonSI Performance Patch To Land In Linux 3.13

Just before Christmas was a patch by Marek Ol??k that provided much better RadeonSI performance. That patch will now be merged into the Linux 3.13 kernel to be released later this month...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTU1NzM

[Nuc!eoN]

r7 260x support?

Does anyone know if this will get the r7 260x to work? Or when will it be supported? I just get a black screen when trying to launch something graphical :/

[coder111]

AMD Radeon support has improved A LOT over last couple of years...

And I just got PRIME working on my Debian laptop which has an AMD APU and an r600 discrete GPU. All full open-source drivers, and I can run Linux games I want, and quite a few non-Linux games over Wine, which is working much better than I expected it to. Now if someone would get Crossfire to work so that the load can be distributed to both GPUs...

I found I am booting to Windows less and less. The only reason why I need Windows is games, and I am finding that they run well enough in Linux via Wine.

Things are finally looking good for Linux. Now I wish I had an open and hackable phone. I have a rooted Android with Cyanogenmod and Lil'Debian on it, but that still feels a bit wrong. Maybe I should get a Jolla next year...

[lolnope]

halp

posting this here because this is somewhat relevant
if someone from Amd sees this, can you please tell me the cards on which 10 bit hardware accelerated decoding works?
I have a uvd 2.2 capable 4650, which I was thinking about using while building a htpc. is that capable of 10 bit hardware accelerated decoding or should I buy the new uvd 3 cards?
this is very important for me because the processor I'll be using is very weak and i have a lot of 10 bit h.264 videos
also thank you based marek

[edoantonioco]

I hope to see more improvements for r600 (older radeons). Now it runs good, but compared to the privative driver the difference is still big.

[extraymond]

And I just got PRIME working on my Debian laptop which has an AMD APU and an r600 discrete GPU. All full open-source drivers, and I can run Linux games I want, and quite a few non-Linux games over Wine, which is working much better than I expected it to. Now if someone would get Crossfire to work so that the load can be distributed to both GPUs...

I found I am booting to Windows less and less. The only reason why I need Windows is games, and I am finding that they run well enough in Linux via Wine.

Things are finally looking good for Linux. Now I wish I had an open and hackable phone. I have a rooted Android with Cyanogenmod and Lil'Debian on it, but that still feels a bit wrong. Maybe I should get a Jolla next year...

Sounds good! How do you managed to get that working?
Does open source driver support prime?

Is that possible to have that same kind of effect on dekstop? I mean apu with a dgpu.
Right now I have a gcn with an a10-5800k.

[coder111]

Quick PRIME howto

Hi,

First, you need PRIME when you have 2 GPUs and a single graphical output. If you have a desktop, you probably have video output on the motherboard, and a separate video output on your discrete GPU, so you can just plug in monitor into whichever GPU you are using.

Anything I'm writing here I've tested with AMD APU + Radeon discrete GPU and open-source drivers. It should be applicable for Intel CPU + Nvidia GPU + Noveau drivers.

Anyway, to switch which GPU is used, you first need VGASWITCHEROO working. Install a recent (I tested with 3.12) kernel. Then after bootup, check if file /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch exists. If it doesn't, mount debugfs:

mount -t debugfs none /sys/kernel/debug

The file /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch containis info about your GPUs, which are powered, which are actively used.

To start using integrated GPU, do:
echo IGD > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

To start using discrete GPU, do:
echo DIS > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

To turn off discrete GPU to save power, do:
echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

I think this should be enough for desktop systems.

If you want to use PRIME, you need both discrete and integrated GPU ON, and Integrated must be active (because it's connected to the video outputs). Then you need xrandr and a window manager with composition enabled. I used xfce WM with composition enabled, alternatively you can use xcompmgr.

First, check your rendering providers using "xrandr --listproviders". It will print something like this:

Providers: number : 2
Provider 0: id: 0x8a cap: 0xf, Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload crtcs: 2 outputs: 3 associated providers: 0 name:radeon
Provider 1: id: 0x55 cap: 0xf, Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload crtcs: 6 outputs: 0 associated providers: 0 name:radeon

To enable rendering on your discrete GPU, you need to do this:

xrandr --setprovideroffloadsink <discrete ID> <integrated ID>

For my system, it was:
xrandr --setprovideroffloadsink 0x55 0x8a

Then when you execute a piece of software you want to render on discrete GPU, set environment variable DRI_PRIME=1. for example:

glxgears # runs on integrated GPU
DRI_PRIME=1 glxgears # runs on discrete GPU.

If glxgears gets a blank window, do make sure your window manager is a composing window manager. Without it PRIME does not work.

I hope this helps.

[Adarion]

That's a good happy new year message. Nice to see it made it into 3.13. Hopefully all these little APUs are also being handled well.

Have a great 2014 everyone.

[Dukenukemx]

And I just got PRIME working on my Debian laptop which has an AMD APU and an r600 discrete GPU. All full open-source drivers, and I can run Linux games I want, and quite a few non-Linux games over Wine, which is working much better than I expected it to. Now if someone would get Crossfire to work so that the load can be distributed to both GPUs...

I found I am booting to Windows less and less. The only reason why I need Windows is games, and I am finding that they run well enough in Linux via Wine.

Things are finally looking good for Linux. Now I wish I had an open and hackable phone. I have a rooted Android with Cyanogenmod and Lil'Debian on it, but that still feels a bit wrong. Maybe I should get a Jolla next year...

I have Mint 16 with 3.12 and PRIME can crash the UI, or Cinnamon, or mdm, or whatever. I also have Oibaf drivers installed as well.

DRI_PRIME=1 Steam and Portal 2 goes from 10 fps to 30 fps. It's when I try to run World of Warcraft that things freeze up and the desktop reboots, which I have to log back in. DRI_PRIME=1 wine wow-64.exe and it works for a few seconds then everything freezes, but I can still close the game. The screen goes black and I have to log back in.

With kernel 3.13, I just never get the laptop to boot. Just freezes as soon as the UI is loaded. Seems like a problem with the Cinnamon UI, but am I the only person that experiences this?

[Bitiquinho]

Just a little tip

PRIME needs compositing to work properly. In KDE, I had to uncheck the option to disable compositing in fullscreen apps so that using DRI_PRIME=1 doesn't crash things.