Laptop Heat with radeonhd??
One last issue, For some reason, my laptop runs hotter with the radeonhd driver. Does this make sense?? Is is possible?? Are there any tweaks that can be made to cool it down besides throwing water on it? -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
2009/5/20 David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
One last issue,
For some reason, my laptop runs hotter with the radeonhd driver. Does this make sense?? Is is possible?? Are there any tweaks that can be made to cool it down besides throwing water on it?
That's because radeonhd doesn't downclock engine or memory by default. Actually we support only engine down clocking for now and it's available only with git version of driver (1.2.5 is too old). You can use Option "ForceLowPowerMode" then. You can also experiment with Option "LowPowerModeEngineClock" "int" just get: grep "Default Engine" /var/log/Xorg.0.log and divide clock by more than 2 (for example clock/4 or even /8). -- Rafał Miłecki -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
Rafał Miłecki wrote:
2009/5/20 David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
: One last issue,
For some reason, my laptop runs hotter with the radeonhd driver. Does this make sense?? Is is possible?? Are there any tweaks that can be made to cool it down besides throwing water on it?
That's because radeonhd doesn't downclock engine or memory by default. Actually we support only engine down clocking for now and it's available only with git version of driver (1.2.5 is too old).
You can use Option "ForceLowPowerMode" then.
You can also experiment with Option "LowPowerModeEngineClock" "int" just get: grep "Default Engine" /var/log/Xorg.0.log and divide clock by more than 2 (for example clock/4 or even /8).
Rafał, Thank you. I got a default engine clock of 400,000 MHz and then set the following Options in the Device section of xorg.conf: Option "ForceLowPowerMode" Option "LowPowerModeEngineClock" "50000" then restarted X and it didn't make any difference. I even rebooted to make sure. Can you suggest anything else I can try to decrease the clocking to control the heat produced? Then I swapped hard drives in the laptop and booted openSuSE 11.0 running the ATI 8-9 release fglrx driver (ver. 8.532) to check. Heat/Fan Speed dropped significantly and the palm rest temperature returned to normal. That test showed just how important downclocking is for the radeonhd driver. Without it, my left palm was cooked to "medium-well" just be resting my hands normally on the laptop palm rests. With the fglrx driver, which I presume does some type of downclocking, the heat load from the laptop is greatly reduced. If you would like me to send configs, logs, or dumps from either the Archlinux install or the openSuSE install, just let me know. Thanks. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
On May 20, 09 12:23:54 -0500, David C. Rankin wrote:
Then I swapped hard drives in the laptop and booted openSuSE 11.0 running the ATI 8-9 release fglrx driver (ver. 8.532) to check. Heat/Fan Speed dropped significantly and the palm rest temperature returned to normal.
We don't know much about power saving yet. I assume that the fglrx
driver is not only reducing clock speed, but also powering down unused
chip areas and probably programming the clock gating circuits.
We have no information about that yet.
Matthias
--
Matthias Hopf
Matthias Hopf wrote:
On May 20, 09 12:23:54 -0500, David C. Rankin wrote:
Then I swapped hard drives in the laptop and booted openSuSE 11.0 running the ATI 8-9 release fglrx driver (ver. 8.532) to check. Heat/Fan Speed dropped significantly and the palm rest temperature returned to normal.
We don't know much about power saving yet. I assume that the fglrx driver is not only reducing clock speed, but also powering down unused chip areas and probably programming the clock gating circuits. We have no information about that yet.
Matthias
Matthias, Thank you for that information. I don't know anything about the internal workings of the gpu or chipset throttling, but I can be the monkey at the keyboard if you want any dumps, dmidecodes, or the like that would help build your card/chipset dataset. Thanks for all the good work you guys are doing. Regardless of the issues that are still to be worked, the radeonhd driver is a very good and very usable driver for my laptop. With no fglrx alternative for xorg 7.4 and my laptop chipset on either openSuSE or Arch, it is great to have the radeonhd driver. It works really well and I can always glue a neoprene pad to my laptop palm reset ;-) -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
2009/5/20 David C. Rankin
Rafał Miłecki wrote:
2009/5/20 David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
: One last issue,
For some reason, my laptop runs hotter with the radeonhd driver. Does this make sense?? Is is possible?? Are there any tweaks that can be made to cool it down besides throwing water on it?
That's because radeonhd doesn't downclock engine or memory by default. Actually we support only engine down clocking for now and it's available only with git version of driver (1.2.5 is too old).
You can use Option "ForceLowPowerMode" then.
You can also experiment with Option "LowPowerModeEngineClock" "int" just get: grep "Default Engine" /var/log/Xorg.0.log and divide clock by more than 2 (for example clock/4 or even /8).
Rafał,
Thank you. I got a default engine clock of 400,000 MHz and then set the following Options in the Device section of xorg.conf:
Option "ForceLowPowerMode" Option "LowPowerModeEngineClock" "50000"
then restarted X and it didn't make any difference. I even rebooted to make sure. Can you suggest anything else I can try to decrease the clocking to control the heat produced?
Then I swapped hard drives in the laptop and booted openSuSE 11.0 running the ATI 8-9 release fglrx driver (ver. 8.532) to check. Heat/Fan Speed dropped significantly and the palm rest temperature returned to normal.
That test showed just how important downclocking is for the radeonhd driver. Without it, my left palm was cooked to "medium-well" just be resting my hands normally on the laptop palm rests. With the fglrx driver, which I presume does some type of downclocking, the heat load from the laptop is greatly reduced.
If you would like me to send configs, logs, or dumps from either the Archlinux install or the openSuSE install, just let me know. Thanks.
As Matthias mentioned, we downclock engine only. Ideally we should downclock memory and power off some chipsets. Anyway, you should see some difference. Can you attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log so we can be sure you used right version of radeonhd and right options? -- Rafał Miłecki -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
Rafał Miłecki wrote:
As Matthias mentioned, we downclock engine only. Ideally we should downclock memory and power off some chipsets.
Anyway, you should see some difference. Can you attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log so we can be sure you used right version of radeonhd and right options?
Rafał,
Sure, I'm more than happy to. The Xorg.0, Xorg.1, and xorg.conf are attached.
In case they don't come through, I've also posted them on my site in the
following directory:
http://www.3111skyline.com/download/linux/radeonhd/downclock/
--
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com
# /.../
# SaX generated X11 config file
# Created on: 2007-11-06T23:13:34-0600.
#
# Version: 8.1
# Contact: Marcus Schaefer
2009/5/20 David C. Rankin
Rafał Miłecki wrote:
As Matthias mentioned, we downclock engine only. Ideally we should downclock memory and power off some chipsets.
Anyway, you should see some difference. Can you attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log so we can be sure you used right version of radeonhd and right options?
Rafał,
Sure, I'm more than happy to. The Xorg.0, Xorg.1, and xorg.conf are attached. In case they don't come through, I've also posted them on my site in the following directory:
http://www.3111skyline.com/download/linux/radeonhd/downclock/
In your Xorg.0.logs there is no info about seeing Option "ForceLowPowerMode" line. Don't understand that. Does file you attached was located in /etc/X11/xorg.conf? That's the file Xorg.0.log seems to use. -- Rafał Miłecki -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
Rafał Miłecki wrote:
2009/5/20 David C. Rankin
: Rafał Miłecki wrote:
As Matthias mentioned, we downclock engine only. Ideally we should downclock memory and power off some chipsets.
Anyway, you should see some difference. Can you attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log so we can be sure you used right version of radeonhd and right options?
Rafał,
Sure, I'm more than happy to. The Xorg.0, Xorg.1, and xorg.conf are attached. In case they don't come through, I've also posted them on my site in the following directory:
http://www.3111skyline.com/download/linux/radeonhd/downclock/
In your Xorg.0.logs there is no info about seeing Option "ForceLowPowerMode" line. Don't understand that. Does file you attached was located in /etc/X11/xorg.conf? That's the file Xorg.0.log seems to use.
Rafał, I can't explain it either. The xorg.conf sent, and the one posted at: http://www.3111skyline.com/download/linux/radeonhd/downclock/xorg.conf is the xorg.conf that was in place when the log file: http://www.3111skyline.com/download/linux/radeonhd/downclock/Xorg.0.log was created. I grepped through the log file and I can't find anything to say that the ForceLowPowerMode option was even applied. I will swap hard drives again and create a fresh set of logs to post. Thank you for your help. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
On or about Wednesday 20 May 2009 at approximately 13:46:24 Rafał Miłecki composed:
2009/5/20 David C. Rankin
: Rafał Miłecki wrote:
As Matthias mentioned, we downclock engine only. Ideally we should downclock memory and power off some chipsets.
Anyway, you should see some difference. Can you attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log so we can be sure you used right version of radeonhd and right options?
Rafał,
Sure, I'm more than happy to. The Xorg.0, Xorg.1, and xorg.conf are attached. In case they don't come through, I've also posted them on my site in the following directory:
http://www.3111skyline.com/download/linux/radeonhd/downclock/
In your Xorg.0.logs there is no info about seeing Option "ForceLowPowerMode" line. Don't understand that. Does file you attached was located in /etc/X11/xorg.conf? That's the file Xorg.0.log seems to use.
-- Rafał Miłecki
Rafał, I have swapped drives again and updated all of the files in: http://www.3111skyline.com/download/linux/radeonhd/downclock/ Note: I added a timestamp to the end of the filenames so they won't get overwritten. Example: 15:18 nirvana:/srv/www/download/linux/radeonhd/downclock> ls -1 Xorg.0.log.20151550 Xorg.0.log.old.20151550 Xorg.1.log.20151550 Xorg.1.log.old.20151550 xorg.conf.20151550 The log now shows that ForceLowPowerMode was used to set the clock at 100000 Mhz. The heat is reduced, but not by as much as I had hoped. Originally I had tried to set "LowPowerModeEngineClock" "50000", but when X started, the screen was wildly distorted and "stretched?" so that the kdm login was at the far right side of the screen. Can I just pick a number that isn't a direct multiple/factor of the full power clock of say 70000? Funny, I don't notice any performance difference between the clock at 400000 or 100000. Let me know what else I can send you. Thanks again! -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
2009/5/20 David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
The log now shows that ForceLowPowerMode was used to set the clock at 100000 Mhz. The heat is reduced, but not by as much as I had hoped. Originally I had tried to set "LowPowerModeEngineClock" "50000", but when X started, the screen was wildly distorted and "stretched?" so that the kdm login was at the far right side of the screen.
Can I just pick a number that isn't a direct multiple/factor of the full power clock of say 70000?
Any sensible value should work. The algorithm in AtomBIOS seems to automatically adjust it to a nearby possible value if the exact specified clock can't be achieved. -- Yang Zhao http://yangman.ca -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
On or about Wednesday 20 May 2009 at approximately 15:35:32 Yang Zhao composed:
2009/5/20 David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
: The log now shows that ForceLowPowerMode was used to set the clock at 100000 Mhz. The heat is reduced, but not by as much as I had hoped. Originally I had tried to set "LowPowerModeEngineClock" "50000", but when X started, the screen was wildly distorted and "stretched?" so that the kdm login was at the far right side of the screen.
Can I just pick a number that isn't a direct multiple/factor of the full power clock of say 70000?
Any sensible value should work. The algorithm in AtomBIOS seems to automatically adjust it to a nearby possible value if the exact specified clock can't be achieved.
-- Yang Zhao http://yangman.ca
Yang, Here is a final bit of follow-up on this thread. In summary fashion: "LowPowerModeEngineClock" "50000" X would start, but was unreadable with all information pushed off the right side of the display; "LowPowerModeEngineClock" "100000" X starts and works fine with kdm. Heat load and fan noise were reduced, but not by very much. Notable slowness on compiz-fusion splash on compiz start and cube rotate. Laptop palmrest still uncomfortably warm compared to fglrx driver. "LowPowerModeEngineClock" "200000" Heat load and fan noise increased, no perceptible slowness in compiz splash but slow cube rotation compared to full clock of 400000. Thank you for all your help. I am now set up to test the radeonhd driver and I'm happy to do it. As mentioned before, if I can send or post anything else, just let me know. I have posted the latest Xorg.0.log at: http://www.3111skyline.com/download/linux/radeonhd/downclock/Xorg.0.log.2022... Great driver and much needed now with the fglrx driver going away for so many users. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
On May 20, 09 22:25:22 -0500, David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. wrote:
"LowPowerModeEngineClock" "100000"
X starts and works fine with kdm. Heat load and fan noise were reduced, but
Ok, in that case your chipset allows for lower clock speeds,
interesting. We'll discuss this with AMD shortly, maybe we get some more
insights. Maybe we even find out what the lowest possible speed is.
Matthias
--
Matthias Hopf
2009/6/3 Matthias Hopf
On May 20, 09 22:25:22 -0500, David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. wrote:
"LowPowerModeEngineClock" "100000"
X starts and works fine with kdm. Heat load and fan noise were reduced, but
Ok, in that case your chipset allows for lower clock speeds, interesting. We'll discuss this with AMD shortly, maybe we get some more insights. Maybe we even find out what the lowest possible speed is.
I've actually been running with memory clock of 250kHz and engine clock of 150kHz on my RV770 for some time. Engine clock at 100kHz seems to be fine as well. -- Yang Zhao http://yangman.ca -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
On Jun 03, 09 09:05:07 -0700, Yang Zhao wrote:
2009/6/3 Matthias Hopf
: Ok, in that case your chipset allows for lower clock speeds, interesting. We'll discuss this with AMD shortly, maybe we get some more insights. Maybe we even find out what the lowest possible speed is.
I've actually been running with memory clock of 250kHz and engine clock of 150kHz on my RV770 for some time. Engine clock at 100kHz seems to be fine as well.
I assume you're talking about MHz ;-)
I had system lockups at 100MHz with RV610.
Memory clock settings might be interesting to set, but we have to
blank the display when setting them, so this is nothing to set often.
Unfortunately, because with DDR5 RAM this gives you the biggest savings
according to my meassurements.
CU
Matthias
--
Matthias Hopf
2009/6/3 Matthias Hopf
On Jun 03, 09 09:05:07 -0700, Yang Zhao wrote:
2009/6/3 Matthias Hopf
: Ok, in that case your chipset allows for lower clock speeds, interesting. We'll discuss this with AMD shortly, maybe we get some more insights. Maybe we even find out what the lowest possible speed is.
I've actually been running with memory clock of 250kHz and engine clock of 150kHz on my RV770 for some time. Engine clock at 100kHz seems to be fine as well.
I assume you're talking about MHz ;-)
Um, indeed. ;)
Memory clock settings might be interesting to set, but we have to blank the display when setting them, so this is nothing to set often. Unfortunately, because with DDR5 RAM this gives you the biggest savings according to my meassurements.
It also affects performance quite a bit, especially for Xv. Probably only reasonable, by default, to downclock only when in a low DPMS state. -- Yang Zhao http://yangman.ca -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
On May 20, 09 15:24:36 -0500, David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. wrote:
The log now shows that ForceLowPowerMode was used to set the clock at 100000 Mhz. The heat is reduced, but not by as much as I had hoped. Originally I had tried to set "LowPowerModeEngineClock" "50000", but when X started, the screen was wildly distorted and "stretched?" so that the kdm login was at the far right side of the screen.
To my experience any clock setting below 200MHz will possibly crash the machine (whole machine freeze, i.e. the PCI bus locked up). I don't know the exact lower frequency, but 200MHz seems to be a save lower limit.
Funny, I don't notice any performance difference between the clock at 400000 or 100000. Let me know what else I can send you. Thanks again!
We're not really utilizing the chip at all ATM. You might find
differences in speed when using 3D applications.
Matthias
--
Matthias Hopf
participants (5)
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David C. Rankin
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David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
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Matthias Hopf
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Rafał Miłecki
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Yang Zhao