Looking for AMDGPU help, someone else with RadeonSI/HD7750 or Gallium9

nannerpussy · 2017-02-16 19:16:55

I've successfully downloaded the binaries and installed, as well as compiling the entire stack myself over about four hours total last night, but I cannot get any DE working period with the AMDGPU, AMDGPU-PRO, or the Gallium Nine drivers. I'm on a weird card, a Radeon HD7750 from Sapphire that was designed for a mATX case but has an ATX adapter and such. It's a few years old, but according to the Gallium guys, Mesa Matrix, and AMD's site, this card should just now be coming into support on the latest stack. After I install I boot fine, kernel mode setting sets in fine, my display manager starts perfectly.. then I login and the desktop session dies immediately. It's happened with Cinnamon, XFCE4, and Deepin now. I know Cinnamon/Gnome3 probably has my card blackballed with the DRI3 drivers, but I can't understand how XFCE4 did the same thing and died after xorg and the dm both started fine.

I guess what I'm looking for is either an expert with the latest AMDGPU stacks and "bubble support" cards like mine that were almost thrown to the wolves, or perhaps someone with the same GCN as me who has gotten it working. Am I just pissing in the wind by even trying? I'm a total noob so I was pretty surprised I manually compiled the damn thing (passing the -enable-nine flag) and it didn't blow up my PC. But even with precompiled parts, no dice. Why does xorg, xorg-server, sddm and lightdm start just fine if I'm doing something wrong? It's not as through it's a brand new card either. It's well-supported in all DEs I've used, up until these drivers.

Edit: Having just cloned back to a base Arch install after the XFCE4 abortion I don't have any useful system output from glxinfo or inxi, but I can point to the exact package versions I used if that helps. I followed the Gallium9 site's instructions to a T and I think even if you don't do what they say the version of wine-staging-nine in our repo is smart enough to detect your other drivers and pass the required option if installed... either way it was done right AFAIK

Last edited by nannerpussy (2017-02-16 19:20:12)

Lone_Wolf · 2017-02-17 12:40:10

Mesa on Arch Linux has supported gallium9 for a long time now.

Unless you want to use AMD proprietary driver AMDGPU-PRO official repos have everything you need .

All those DEs you mention have one thing in common : they use a version of the GTK toolkit .

Try something using the QT toolkit or window managers like openbox, i3 etc that don't rely on any toolkit.

nannerpussy · 2017-02-18 21:54:34

Lone_Wolf wrote:

Mesa on Arch Linux has supported gallium9 for a long time now.
Unless you want to use AMD proprietary driver AMDGPU-PRO official repos have everything you need .
All those DEs you mention have one thing in common : they use a version of the GTK toolkit .
Try something using the QT toolkit or window managers like openbox, i3 etc that don't rely on any toolkit.

Will do. Let's say I did this without actually using the xf86-video-amdgpu driver proper and kept the -ati driver, would it all be for nothing when it comes to wine-staging-nine? The actual developer page and material directly from them is well-meaning, but translated into English and a lot of things glossed over, on top of how quickly things can change lately. Plus I am still trying to wrap my head around driver stacks, how they work, and learning as I go, but the way I read everything, unless I'm using a base of the actual AMDGPU driver, I won't be able to benefit from any aspect of it, like the newest OpenGL settings.

Last edited by nannerpussy (2017-02-18 21:54:59)

Lone_Wolf · 2017-02-19 16:13:58

a simplified description of linux graphics stack

Layer 1. kernel module
layer 2. libdrm
layer 3. OpenGL / EGL / GLES provider
layer 4. graphical environment

drivers like xf86-video-* sit between layer 3 and 4 and have nothing to do with layer 1 and 2.

For the opensource drivers layer 3 is normally mesa, but there do exist other implementations like TinyGL .

The nine in wine-staging-nine refers to the Gallium Direct3D 9 statetracker which comes with mesa.

Normally wine acts like this for gallium-based drivers : DirectX <> OpenGL <> Gallium
Wine-nine does DirectX <> Gallium , bypassing OpenGL .

The xf86-video-* driver someone uses should have very little impact on wine-nine.

The kernel module is likely to have more impact :

radeon kernel module is mature and stable, but lacks some features.
The new amdgpu kernel module only works with GCN cards.
GCN generation 1 to 3 can use either radeon or amdgpu kernel module, while GCN 4 and later cards can only use the amdgpu kernel module.
Amdgpu kernel module is very much a work in progress, compared to radeon kenrel module amdgpu tends to perform better AND break more often.

Arch Linux

#1 2017-02-16 19:16:55

Looking for AMDGPU help, someone else with RadeonSI/HD7750 or Gallium9

#2 2017-02-17 12:40:10

Re: Looking for AMDGPU help, someone else with RadeonSI/HD7750 or Gallium9

#3 2017-02-18 21:54:34

Re: Looking for AMDGPU help, someone else with RadeonSI/HD7750 or Gallium9

#4 2017-02-19 16:13:58

Re: Looking for AMDGPU help, someone else with RadeonSI/HD7750 or Gallium9

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