Created attachment 22623 [details] lspci Hi, I have a Lenovo W500 thinkpad. When I use fglrx in Xorg my laptop only consumes 15-16W, but fglrx is so unstable that it crashes on logout, and I despise using it. When I use the OPENSUSE 11.1 radeonhd driver, I have much improved stability (although no acceleration), but power usage also jumps to 35W! I have tried xorg-x11-driver-video-radeonhd-1.2.4_121202_4e89726-1.5 and even the latest xf86-video-radeonhd git version but they all behave the same. Interestingly, when I'm not in X I also have high power usage, whether or not fglrx or radeon modules are loaded or not. I suppose the graphics card is not running in low power modes without fglrx. The only way I can get low power usage is through using fglrx in an Xorg session... I have even tried the radeontool tip mentioned here - http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6522 - but it made no difference. Any ideas would be appreciated! cheers Niel
http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeonhd #8. Known Bugs & Limitations: > No powermanagement yet. Depending on your hardware, the fan might run at full speed. This turned out to be really tricky.
(In reply to comment #1) > http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeonhd > #8. Known Bugs & Limitations: > > No powermanagement yet. Depending on your hardware, the fan might run at full speed. This turned out to be really tricky. > Power-management is one thing, but initializing an adapter so that is actually usable should be another, right? It's not just the fan I think, I think the clock-speed is running at max too. I guess I'm hoping someone has had a look at the specs ATI published and will be able to recommend something... cheers Niel
Controlling GPU and memory clock speed _is_ the main component of power management. Hardware usually defaults to its maximum, then regulated to a slower state through whatever means. As far as I've been told, how power management is done changed between r5xx and r6xx, so none of the old work around work. Laptops also tend to be extra tricky. We can only wait until PM-related info becomes available.
Hi, I also have a 3650 HD in my laptop and I found that once I modprobe fglrx (the proprietary driver from ATI for Linux), the fan noise is considerably reduced and the behavior of the GPU/fan (on/off) is the same as when running Windows Vista. That's fglrx is properly switching between the various PowerPlay tables once loaded. Having PM support (into any radeon driver) and documentation released to the developers is a mandatory (not optional) step to support users who chose to buy AMD's chips. PowerPlay is part of the product, the end-user bought, and not having it means that he can't enjoy the full utility of the said chip (eventhough the end-user paid the price for it) because of a potentially reduced chip lifetime, especially for laptops. I think that PowerPlay support as much important as any other functionality such as 2D and 3D acceleration and I for one, really hope that AMD will take the right decisions and provide the much needed documentation. Regards, Ilyes Gouta.
Does this issue occur with the preferred ati driver (xf86-vide-ati)? If so, please move this to the Driver/Radeon component. Development of radeonhd has pretty much halted and development focus is on the ati driver. Please see http://www.x.org/wiki/radeonhd If the issue does not exist in the ati driver (or if there is no response to this message), this bug will be closed as WONTFIX unless someone contributes a patch.
Closing due to lack of response. Please reopen and move to the Driver/Radeon component if this issue persists with xf86-video-ati
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