AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX / ASUS ROG Strix G15 Is A Nicer Experience On Ubuntu 21.10

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX / ASUS ROG Strix G15 Is A Nicer Experience On Ubuntu 21.10

Earlier this week I posted benchmarks showing how Intel Tiger Lake performance has improved nicely for Ubuntu 21.10 compared to Ubuntu 21.04. Of course, readers immediately wondered whether this also applied on the AMD laptop side... So here are some tests using an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX with the ASUS ROG Strix G15 AMD Advantage laptop under Ubuntu 21.04, Ubuntu 21.10, and then also looking at running Linux 5.15 + Mesa 21.3-devel Git for an even more bleeding edge experience.

https://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=30585

[ivan.cwb]

I bought this notebook and it's really awesome for Linux (if you don't need an integrated webcam .

After the Debian sid installation, everything worked fine, except for bluetooth, that is something I don't care for now...

My former laptop was another full AMD and worked like a charm too... It's a completely different experience from an NVIDIA laptop...

[RedEyed]

I bought this notebook and it's really awesome for Linux (if you don't need an integrated webcam .

After the Debian sid installation, everything worked fine, except for bluetooth, that is something I don't care for now...

My former laptop was another full AMD and worked like a charm too... It's a completely different experience from an NVIDIA laptop...

Tpical linux user: "it's really awesome for Linux, everithing works fine except web cam, wifi, bluethooth, gpu acceleration (I don't need them), the battery life is 2 hours, but I usualy stay on AC so it's fine."
It's sad to read such messages w/o any rationale (what concretely is awesome for Linux in this laptop?).

There are at least different laptop manufactures that works better on linux than this ASUS.
For example: I have Acer, and I don't have any HW issues, at least webcam, bluetooth, wifi etc works fine.

[ivan.cwb]

Tpical linux user: "it's really awesome for Linux, everithing works fine except web cam, wifi, bluethooth, gpu acceleration (I don't need them), the battery life is 2 hours, but I usualy stay on AC so it's fine."
It's sad to read such messages w/o any rationale (what concretely is awesome for Linux in this laptop?).

There are at least different laptop manufactures that works better on linux than this ASUS.
For example: I have Acer, and I don't have any HW issues, at least webcam, bluetooth, wifi etc works fine.

hahaha, you're not wrong at all, but _for me_ it works perfectly. I always put a tape into the webcam of my notebooks, and I have an offboard logitech brio 4k webcam that works really good, so for me not having a webcam is a feature, not a bug, since I use webcam only for job interviews.

For the bluetooth, I never used it, even in my former laptop that worked. And that's something that probably will be fixed in the future, and I will not notice it, because I don't use it, anyway.

It's sad to read such messages w/o any rationale (what concretely is awesome for Linux in this laptop?).

I did some tests before/after with rust compilation, and it took 1/3 of time to compile the projects I was testing (including servo). This CPU is a beast. For the GPU, I tested with Valheim and RE, and it worked 4k@60fps... So, yes, I would call it awesome, but again: _for my needs_...

[FireBurn]

I've bought one of these, replaced the RAM with 64GB from Crucial

Have issues suspending when running on battery though https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/1720

It's amazing being able to play DX11 & 12 games on Wine with all the setting at max with playable framerates - very impressed

[blacknova]

I've bought one of these, replaced the RAM with 64GB from Crucial

Did that work well? Official spec is at 32gb max.

[arglebargle]

Did that work well? Official spec is at 32gb max.

Mfgrs undershoot max RAM specs *all the time* so this is nothing new. According to at least one guy in our ROG laptop linux discord community it works fine.

[Adarion]

"prompting to shutdown the system at each key press event"
OMFG. How could a keyboard even send events such as this? Something must've been really foul there. Good to read it's fixed, um, but from the kbd layout it's still not my cup of tea.

[Linuxxx]

It's amazing being able to play DX11 & 12 games on Wine with all the setting at max with playable framerates - very impressed

That's really good to read!

Just curious: Was that with the 'schedutil' or 'performance' CPU governors?

I'm asking because I just looked up the clock rates of the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX - 3.3 Ghz base clocks with a turbo boost of upto 4.6 Ghz.

Now the question is:
Is it still wise to stick to the 'performance' CPU governor in a thermally constrained machine like a notebook that also includes a dGPU, or will 'schedutil' actually provide a better experience, particularly for longer gaming sessions?
Also, at least part of the gains shown in the CPU benchmarks probably have to do with improvements to 'schedutil', since it is being used on all the different configurations tested here.

I'm wondering because I plan to eventually replace my HTPC with a newer generation CPU, and what they all have in common are rather low base clocks combined with rather high boost clocks.
That's why I start to ponder whether the age of just always sticking to the 'performance' CPU governor at all times is slowely but surely coming to an end, even when gaming on Linux...

[Linuxxx]

For the GPU, I tested with Valheim and RE, and it worked 4k@60fps... So, yes, I would call it awesome, but again: _for my needs_...

Same question for you as well, if you mind:

Was your laptop running with "schedutil" or the "performance" CPU governor while gaming?