Here Is A Linux 4.5-rc2 Kernel To Play With The New AMDGPU Functionality

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 1 February 2016 at 09:53 AM EST. Add A Comment
LINUX KERNEL
With a report that Linux 4.5-rc2 manages to improve the AMD R9 Fury (Fiji) performance, I spun up a Linux 4.5-rc2 kernel this morning for easing those wanting to test the AMDGPU driver atop Ubuntu.

While the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA ships with the AMDGPU DRM driver enabled, it doesn't yet enable the new PowerPlay Kconfig option for getting faster performance on hardware like Fiji, Tonga, etc. Their kernel also doesn't ship with the experimental CIK GPU support enabled. Thus I spun a 4.5-rc2 kernel this morning that enables these extra AMDGPU tunables.

If you want to use the AMDGPU driver with a Sea Islands / CIK GPU (GCN 1.1 like Hawaii, Bonaire, etc), you still need to blacklist the Radeon DRM kernel driver. Additionally, you need to ensure you have downloaded the very latest Radeon firmware microcode blobs otherwise the AMDGPU driver can't initialize the hardware.

With regard to the PowerPlay option, while this kernel spin enables the Kconfig option, you still need to boot your kernel with amdgpu.powerplay=1 to actually enable this power management support at runtime.

If you want to give this Linux 4.5-rc2 kernel a try on Ubuntu x86_64 boxes, you can download it at Phoronix.net. Shortly I'll share my R9 Fury test results to see if the performance improved at all for me on this weekly kernel test release.
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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