amdgpu and Vulkan

ugly

Active member
This forum is pretty dead, so I thought I'd post something here.

Here is a quick guide on getting amdgpu and Vulkan going for Southern Islands cards. This will give better support for Proton.

I'm on Linux Mint 19.1 and have a HD7850. This works on kernel 4.15 and 4.18. For some reason, I couldn't get amdgpu working on 4.19.

It should go without saying that you should back up before you attempt this.

To get the latest open source drivers, you can use the Olibaf PPA:

Code:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers
sudo apt-get update

To prevent booting to a black screen, create a file 20-amdgpu.conf in /usr/Share/X11/xorg.conf.d/

With:
Code:
Section "Device"
     Identifier "AMD"
     Driver "amdgpu"
     Option "TearFree" "true"
     Option "AccelMethod" "glamor"
     Option "DRI" "3"
EndSection

If you already have a 20-radeon.conf, I'd rename it to something like 20-radeon.bak just in case you need to go back to it.

By default, the radeon driver is used. To enable amdgpu, you need to make some changes to grub.

Code:
xed admin:///etc/default/grub

Obviously, you can use your text editor of choice instead of xed.

We need to add radeon.si_support=0 radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1 amdgpu.cik_support=1 to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT.

For reference, mine looks like:
Code:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash radeon.si_support=0 radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1 amdgpu.cik_support=1"

Then update grub:
Code:
sudo update-grub

Then you can reboot.

After you reboot, you can install a few packages:
Code:
sudo apt install mesa-vulkan-drivers mesa-vulkan-drivers:i386 mesa-va-drivers vdpau-driver-all

That should be all. The one downside is that with amdgpu you lose some hardware video decoding.
 
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You mean you couldn't get amdgpu from that particular repo working on 4.19? Or in general?

Moved.
 
You mean you couldn't get amdgpu from that particular repo working on 4.19? Or in general?

Moved.
I'm pretty sure that all you should need in order to load the amdgpu driver instead of the radeon driver is the kernel parameters: radeon.si_support=0 radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1 amdgpu.cik_support=1 (actually you would probably only need the .si or the .cik ones depending on your card). So using the repo or not, shouldn't matter.

Using the repo is just to get you the latest mesa packages, which might get you better compatibility with Proton depending on the game. Some games might even work with Proton with the radeon driver.

With 4.19, amdgpu won't load for me. I've seen a few others complain about it too on 4.19.
 
I have not had any luck with Vulkan and AMD Vega m with the Radeon driver. OGL 4.5 is okay.
Do you think the amdgpu driver works with Vega m(Hades Canyon NUC)?

I'm gonna give it a go on Fedora 29. Whats the worst that can happen? :p

[edit]
Hmmm no luck loading the amdgpu driver for me on kernel 4.19.

amdgpu is in the standard fedora 29 repos so I did a:
sudo yum install xorg-x11-drv-amdgpu.x86_64
then updated grub as so:
linux /vmlinuz-4.19.10-300.fc29.x86_64 root=/dev/mapper/fedora-root ro resume=/dev/mapper/fedora-swap rd.lvm.lv=fedora/root rd.lvm.lv=fedora/swap rhgb quiet radeon.si_support=0 radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1 amdgpu.cik_support=1


reboot and Xorg.0.log has:
List of video drivers:
[ 49.898] ati
[ 49.898] intel
[ 49.898] nouveau
[ 49.898] openchrome
[ 49.898] qxl
[ 49.898] radeon
[ 49.898] vmware
[ 49.898] modesetting
[ 49.898] fbdev
[ 49.898] vesa



I'm guessing 'amdgpu' should be in there...:(*

Changes didn't seem to break anything:lol:

[edit 2]
added amdgpu.dc=1 to my grub linux line. still no joy.

[edit 3]
Got the amdgpu driver to load by reinstalling amdgpu:
dnf reinstall xorg-x11-drv-amdgpu


Vulkan Doom still sucks

GlZuXtn.png


Device section of xorg.conf

Section "Device"
### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz",
### <percent>: "<f>%"
### [arg]: arg optional
#Option "Accel" # [<bool>]
#Option "SWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "EnablePageFlip" # [<bool>]
#Option "SubPixelOrder" # [<str>]
#Option "ZaphodHeads" # <str>
#Option "AccelMethod" # <str>
#Option "DRI3" # [<bool>]
#Option "DRI" # <i>
#Option "ShadowPrimary" # [<bool>]
#Option "TearFree" # [<bool>]
#Option "DeleteUnusedDP12Displays" # [<bool>]
Identifier "Card1"
Driver "amdgpu"
BusID "PCI:1:0:1"
EndSection


Should I enable some stuff that is commented out?
Already disabled the Intel iGPU in the "bios"
 
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