You are not logged in.

#1 2012-05-08 03:08:23

htedrom
Member
Registered: 2012-04-21
Posts: 38

[SOLVED] radeon/radeon dual GPU halp:)

Hey all, I just got a new laptop with radeon/radeon hybrid gpus and I'm a little lost as to how to go about setting anything up. The hybrid wiki only really mentions ati/intel, but I've got both my cards on the radeon driver.

I'm pretty sure arch has both cards going full tilt because the laptop is getting pretty hot and I can change the backlight in /sys/class/backlight/ for either video card and they both change the screen brightness.

I'm also not even sure which card is which;

# lspci |grep -i vga
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Device 9647
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Seymour [Radeon HD 6400M Series]

I though both cards are 6400m series, the dedicated is a 6470M and I thought I remembered seeing the integrated card as a 6400-series as well on windows when I first got it, but I'm no longer sure.

here they are in lshw

description: VGA compatible controller
                product: Seymour [Radeon HD 6400M Series]
                vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI
                physical id: 0
                bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
                version: 00
                width: 64 bits
                clock: 33MHz
                capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
                configuration: driver=radeon latency=0
                resources: irq:44 memory:b0000000-bfffffff memory:fea20000-fea3ffff ioport:e000(size=256) memory:fea00000-fea1ffff

description: VGA compatible controller
             product: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI
             vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI
             physical id: 1
             bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0
             version: 00
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
             configuration: driver=radeon latency=0
             resources: irq:41 memory:a0000000-afffffff ioport:f000(size=256) memory:feb00000-feb3ffff

I was thinking of picking one of the cards and writing an xorg.conf to try and disable one and enable the other at x launch, but before I do that does anyone have any words of wisdom or anywhere I should look for guidance? Also is it strange that even with both video cards going on the opensource driver compositing is very slow?

EDIT: ok so I've fixed the compiz and I did try a xorg.conf that specifies one of the devices; this is over my head though. Is specifying the card in the xorg.conf enough to keep one of the cards idle?

EDIT2: nah both cards are still burning full tilt, lm-sensors has both going ~70-74 degrees like they're crunching my math homework

thanks all.

Last edited by htedrom (2012-05-27 05:09:17)

Offline

#2 2012-05-08 13:55:08

Pres
Member
Registered: 2011-09-12
Posts: 423

Re: [SOLVED] radeon/radeon dual GPU halp:)

Few guesses here:

Is there an option to disable one of the chips in your BIOS?

You could try specifying one of the devices to use:

Section "Device"
    Identifier "Device0"
    Driver "radeon"
    BusID "PCI:00:01.0"
EndSection

Using the BusID from lspci. You might have to play around with it here.

Lastly, you'll either want to look at powersaving in the wiki or consider switching to the catalyst driver, which has much better power management.

Offline

#3 2012-05-08 19:21:04

htedrom
Member
Registered: 2012-04-21
Posts: 38

Re: [SOLVED] radeon/radeon dual GPU halp:)

Hey Pres, thanks for the reply

Yea nothing in the BIOS, and sorry specifying by BusId is what I meant by using xorg.conf, so I do have only one specified, though with both cards on the same driver I am unable to blacklist one of them.

I have looked a bit at the ati wiki for powersaving but it doesn't really seem to matter what I do to the cards in terms of power profile.. switching from profile to dynamic didn't seem to change much, nor did specifying a low power profile for one of them. I'm going to install an opengl game when I get home and see what I can see when switching between profiles, but so far in terms of temperature the power profiles didn't seem to have much effect.

Edit: is trying to put only one of the cards on the prop driver possible/a good idea? Could I then blacklist the open source driver for the dedicated card?

Last edited by htedrom (2012-05-08 19:25:09)

Offline

#4 2012-05-09 01:34:58

Pres
Member
Registered: 2011-09-12
Posts: 423

Re: [SOLVED] radeon/radeon dual GPU halp:)

To be honest, I have no idea. There may be a way to disable/blacklist a device by BusID but I'm not aware of any. Try seeing what you can find on Google.

These dual graphics chip setups are fairly new and it will take awhile before linux support catches up.

Offline

#5 2012-05-09 22:22:37

htedrom
Member
Registered: 2012-04-21
Posts: 38

Re: [SOLVED] radeon/radeon dual GPU halp:)

I sort of figured that would be the answer, I'll post anything I find through messing around - thanks

Offline

#6 2012-05-26 10:38:00

carltonf
Member
Registered: 2010-01-22
Posts: 2

Re: [SOLVED] radeon/radeon dual GPU halp:)

I have a very similar graphics card setup.

00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Device 9647
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Thames XT/GL [Radeon HD 7600M Series] (rev ff)

I installed the radeon driver, and use the following commands to disable the discrete graphics card. Unfortunately, arch linux doesn't seem to have a good wiki article on vgaswitcheroo. It also supports many other options.

# graphic card tuning
## connect IGD to the output
echo IGD > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
## turn off currently disconnected graphics card
echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

## enable auto power management for IGD card
echo profile > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method 
echo auto > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile

Offline

#7 2012-05-27 05:12:08

htedrom
Member
Registered: 2012-04-21
Posts: 38

Re: [SOLVED] radeon/radeon dual GPU halp:)

hey carltonf, thanks for that I didn't realize vgaswitcheroo would work. I actually just switched to the catalyst driver, and the packaged aticonfig tool lets me switch statically between discrete and integrated cards, so I disabled the discrete card that way.

that's good to know that you can do it with the radeon driver.

Last edited by htedrom (2012-05-27 05:16:09)

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB