this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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Each time I try AMD graphics, something is fucked for me. Back with fglrx, fglrx just sucked, so I used Nvidia. Then I had an AMD right around when they finally had opensource drivers, but it was still buggy as hell. So I went with Nvidia again (first a GTX 790, then a GTX 1060). In the meantime I had a new work notebook where I also went with an AMD APU, and had driver crashes for a long time when I was in video calls and it had to decode multiple streams. That thankfully stabilized with Linux 6.4.

Since sooo many people in the community swear by AMD, I thought "dammit, let's try it again for my new desktop" and got an 7800rx ... and I have to reboot ~5 times until I finally make it to a running xserver or wayland session. Apparently I am hit by this problem (at least I hope so). But that doesn't even read nice ... the fix seems to be to revert another fix for powermanagement. So I either have a mostly non-booting card or suboptimal power management.

I start to regret having chosen AMD .... again :-/ I seem to be cursed.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Update: today I was able to update to kernel 6.7.5 and the issue disappeared for me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Ohh, so that's the bug I've been experiencing ever since Fedora 39 updated to kernel 6.7. But I only get this on restarts, so cold starts work just fine. I actually have a 7800 XT as well.

But other than that I only noticed one issue: video playback in Firefox sometimes shows visual artifacts across the screen while a game is running in the background (well, with Baldur's Gate 3 at least). Fedora 39, KDE Plasma. Kernel 6.6 or 6.7 (or 6.5 for that matter). That said I also had some suboptimal experiences with browser video playback on an AMD APU notebook under Windows (severe framedrops), so I'm not sure where to point my fingers at.

Other than that it's honestly been great. I switched from Windows + Nvidia to Linux + AMD basically January 1st of this year and only ever booted Windows twice to transfer game saves over for the few games that don't have Steam Cloud.

Turns out most of the problems I had with Linux desktop was with Nvidia. I spent more time troubleshooting than actually using software. AMD isn't perfect on Linux and with new kernel versions you're suspect to run into more issues, but AMD (and Intel) mostly work out of the box.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Run sudo dmesg | grep amdgpu and look for errors.

You may have a firmware file missing, for instance. If that’s the case, it’s an easy fix - just download the firmware files from the kernel tree and put them wherever your system wants them.

This is how I do it on Debian but it should be easy enough to adapt to whatever distribution you’re using (it might be exactly the same tbh): https://blog.c10l.cc/09122023-debian-gaming#firmware

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Thanks for the idea!

dmesg shows the same errors as in the referenced bug ticket. So I don't think missing firmware is the issue. I would not be surprised however, if the problem in general is a combination of amdgpu and firmware behavior. (IMO the hardware should not crash as hard as it does, so the firmware seems to be a bit wonky too)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It could be your monitor or even monitor cable. I have this monitor which absolutely fucking refuses to work with AMD oved HDMI. If you have inexplicable system sleep issues, black screen issues, startup issues, etc. It could be the monitor at fault

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Thanks for the suggestion!

While it's a possibility, I think it's unlikely, since the machine works fine with Windows. I also compiled the tkg 6.7.2 kernel which includes the revert-patch for the offending change and so far the machine booted three times without issues, so it seems to fit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That doesn't rule out the possibility of display issues tho, back when I had the faulty monitor it was much more severe under Linux, I never managed to track it down tho (using AMD hardware for over 10 years now, this one issue busted my nuts pretty hard)

If you have a TV or something, at least try it to rule out possible outside factors

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

It can't hurt. I'll grab another display and another cable and try a few combinations. Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

the most bug-free gpu experience I have with Linux is Nvidia GPU + KDE X11 with compositor disabled. Pure bliss. I've had a 6700XT and it was terrible too, now I have a 4070. For my laptops, intel igpu works decently well with wayland KDE, but there are few bugs, like having to clear some apps gpucache (vscode) quite often

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

At least with my 1060 compositing wasn't an issue. But true, I rarely used Wayland. Do you have specific issues when compositing is enabled or do you just prefer the simpler rendering?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I prefer without for the aesthetics but also for functionality: compositing x11 with multi monitors of different refresh rates is still broken, everything becomes locked at 60hz instead of the max for each monitor.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

KDE Neon user here, I have not touched any graphics settings and my AMD card runs 32:9 120 Hz flawlessly

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I use an AMD 7900rx with an AMD 7950x processor since almost a year with Gnome / Wayland on Arch. No problems up to now. Yes, I am a gamer too.

As others said it depends on the distribution you use.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Arch is not exactly homogeneous. Which Kernel package and version do you use? Which firmware package and version?

I use Arch, btw, and have these issues with default kernel 6.7.2, 6.7.3 and lts kernel 6.6.14. Firmware package seems to be from 2024-01-15, IIRC.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Pretty sure the 7000 series is known to be not well supported yet since they're new and didn't have massive uptake, so I don't want to be that guy but...

Some research before hand on what GPU to get from AMD wouldn't hurt?

I've got a 6800XT and had absolutely 0 issues since I got it about a year ago. I see from your replies you're on Arch, so I guess just wait for things to improve unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I’ve been running a 7900XTX for months without issue. Only thing that was missing was some stuff around power setting, fan curve etc but even that I think has been fixed in recent kernels.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

As I said... I had a lot of trouble in the past and went with nvidia most of the time. It wasn't just a quick shot picking that specific AMD card. My research ended up looking positive. The 6000 series wouldn't have cut it, since the AV1 encoder isn't good enough (or maybe not present at all; I forgot). I also buy this thing to last a few years, so having to take a card from the last generation would have certainly be the point where I just picked nvidia again.

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