I have a Radeon HD 4870 card and for now I am using the proprietary driver. For simple desktop usage, like reading e-mails and browsing the Internet, activities that requires almost nothing from the GFX card, the heat conductors of the card are getting very hot. It seems to me a great waste of power. I am a programmer myself (a 3D programmer, that is why I use the proprietary driver), and intent to start using the free radeonhd driver (and even help with its development), so my questions: is the radeonhd driver more efficient in power saving terms than the proprietary driver? What are the possibilities of improvements on this side? Is it possible, for example, to disable unused memory banks or something like this? I know very little about driver or low-level video programming, but I am willing to learn. -- Lucas Clemente Vella lvella@gmail.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
On May 26, 09 21:19:01 -0300, Lucas Clemente Vella wrote:
I am a programmer myself (a 3D programmer, that is why I use the proprietary driver), and intent to start using the free radeonhd driver (and even help with its development), so my questions: is the radeonhd driver more efficient in power saving terms than the proprietary driver?
Unfortunately, at the moment we're much worse than fglrx. However, we're slowly starting to develop power management features. Still, there's quite some work to do to get competitive.
What are the possibilities of improvements on this side? Is it possible, for example, to disable unused memory banks or something like this?
Not that we know. The docs tell us how we could disable GPU elements (if
little 3D power is needed), but I somehow doubt that this will actually
save us any power. More likely they will just not get any data anymore,
but still run at full speed.
On the other hand, any additional worker is very welcome :-)
Matthias
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Matthias Hopf
participants (2)
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Lucas Clemente Vella
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Matthias Hopf