AMD Freesync on Arch

boogiewoogie · 2017-03-30 09:28:44

Hey arch folks!

I'm in the process of building a new PC and I stumbled upon AMD's Freesync technology which I'd love to include in my considerations.

Now the related guide from AMD ( http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-article … LINUX.aspx ) says that Ubuntu is required.

I've only gotten into Linux a few days ago, straight into arch because I love the philosophy and am learning something new every day. That and the community are reasons I want to stay with arch at any cost. Now I don't know anywhere near enough to make any sort of educated guess about this topic so I thought I'd ask here:

From my understanding, arch really is the most basic Linux, that can theoretically assume the qualities of all but the most obscure things other distros can do. Is this true for whatever is probably required in Ubuntu by the AMD Freesync technology? Can I tweak arch to be able to use Freesync like Ubuntu does?

Is AMD Freesync possible on archlinux?

Hope someone knows enough to give me some insight!

Thanks in advance,
boogiewoogie

Last edited by boogiewoogie (2017-03-30 09:34:35)

Lone_Wolf · 2017-03-30 09:47:47

Freesync on linux is currently only supported by AMD proprietary driver called amdgpu-pro .
The amd opensource driver should support freesync in the future, but whether that future is months or years away is unknown.

Amdgpu-pro is officially only supported on ubuntu, but there is an AUR package for it.
Read up on AUR, makepkg and PKGBUILD in arch wiki to get an idea how to deal with AUR packages.

boogiewoogie · 2017-03-30 10:08:45

Okay, so if I get into that and use the AUR, which I don't see any reason against it, I can get the Amdgpu-pro driver on arch.

I'll get into that then. Also, is there a disadvantage in using something like pacaur (which so far I've been using) for this? After informing myself about the wiki topics you've mentioned, that is.

I don't know if there's info on this or not, but if it is: can I reasonably expect Freesync to work with this? Can I assume this works like it does in Ubuntu? I'm asking because for now this is the information I'd have to work with for the PC building as I'd choose monitor and graphics card depending on this. - And unfortunately I can't test this myself as I don't have the stuff yet.

I'll probably just go with the related hardware anyway and test it myself if nothing can be said about that yet - but still I'd rather ask beforehand. ;-)

Thanks for the help,
boogiewoogie

Lone_Wolf · 2017-03-30 10:44:23

With building AUR packages many things can go wrong.
If someone understands the process and files used, a lot of the issues can be solved easily.

AUR helpers tend to hide what really happens from the user and sometimes are the cause of the problems.

Once an arch user has build enough aur packages manually to understand how things work, they can decide whether they need an aur helper and if so which one.
(how many is enough depends on the user' skill and capabilities).

---------------

Ubuntu tends to have older versions of packages then arch.
The amdgpu-pro package 16.60.379184 needs xorg 1.18.x and a kernel before 4.10 .

The kernel is easy , linux-lts is currently at 4.9.x .
Xorg is trickier as this involves lots of packages. There is an unofficial user repository for older xorg versions though.

Since ubuntu 17.04 is close to release and is said to come with xorg 1.19 and kernel 4.10 , there may be a new version of amdgpu-pro soon.

boogiewoogie · 2017-03-30 14:16:56

Alright, that's good to know.

You've been super helpful, thanks a lot for that! Solved, I guess.

Arch Linux

#1 2017-03-30 09:28:44

AMD Freesync on Arch

#2 2017-03-30 09:47:47

Re: AMD Freesync on Arch

#3 2017-03-30 10:08:45

Re: AMD Freesync on Arch

#4 2017-03-30 10:44:23

Re: AMD Freesync on Arch

#5 2017-03-30 14:16:56

Re: AMD Freesync on Arch

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