Slackware 15.0 AMD RX 6000 series (NAVI 23) power and fan issues

Posted on Jun 18, 2023 by kingbeowulf

After a recent purchase a few months ago of a MSI Mech Radeon RX 6650 XT ($280 US, newegg.com, now $250), I noticed a peculiar behavior whenever the monitor powered down: The admgpu/drm crashed. The system had to be shutdown and power cycled to restore GPU function. Same issue on both motherboards:

Gigabyte X570 AORUS ELITE AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
Kernel 5.15.94 Mesa-22.2.5 libdrm-2.4.115
Gigabyte 27-in 2560x1440 170 Hz IPS

Gigabyte X570 I AORUS PRO WIFI AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
Kernel 5.15.94 Mesa-21.3.5 libdrm-2.4.109
Samsung 28-in 4K 60 Hz IPS

An example or the errors in /var/log/syslog:

Slackware makes the jump to kernel 5.10.x and Xfce-4.16

Posted on Jan 03, 2021 by kingbeowulf

The pace of Slackware Current updates in December was incredible. Fast on the heals of KDE/Plasma 5, we have updates to Kernel 5.10 and then, just in time for Santa, Xfce-4.16. Numerous fixes and additional updates are happening throughout. Refer to the change logs for details: Slackware Change Logs

After the start of the New Year, can a Slackware 15.0 release be far behind?

Slackware64-Current (15.0): mini-ITX Benchmarks Part 3

Posted on Feb 08, 2020 by kingbeowulf

I have finally had some time to compile the benchmarks for a series of GPUs on the new mini-ITX build. The purpose was to see if the amdgpu driver is ready to compete with Nvidia on a Linux powered game box. The GPUs choices are simply what I had available and fairly recent, except for the RX 5700 XT, which was a new purchase.

System Configuration

Slackware64-Current (15.0): mini-ITX Benchmarks Part 3

Posted on Feb 08, 2020 by kingbeowulf

I have finally had some time to compile the benchmarks for a series of GPUs on the new mini-ITX build. The purpose was to see if the amdgpu driver is ready to compete with Nvidia on a Linux powered game box. The GPUs choices are simply what I had available and fairly recent, except for the RX 5700 XT, which was a new purchase.

System Configuration

Slackware64-Current (15.0): mini-ITX Benchmarks Part 2

Posted on Dec 31, 2019 by kingbeowulf

To close out the old and ring in the New Year, I've added my EVGA GTX 1060 6GB GPU to the benchmark comparison. Both the GTX 1060 and GTX 950 are short, single fan ITX form factor cards that will fit the mini-ITX case. We'll have to wait for CES 2020 to see what GPUs AMD announces, and what form factors manufacturers push out. Rumor has it the the second generation Navi will be twice as fast as the current Radeon 5700 XT series. I noticed that the XFX RX590 is a dual BIOS card with a switch - the "perf" run is with that switch set for a more aggressive fan curve (1660+ rpm at idle) vs. quite mode (880 rpm). It didn't provide a significant performance increase but did keep the GPU about 10C cooler. All runs were with VSYNC off but all other settings (driver and phoronix) at default values.

The RX590 ekes out a few more fps over the GTX1060, but generally the performance is nearly equivalent.

Be Still my Heart...

Posted on Oct 25, 2018 by kingbeowulf

Slackware-current popped in kernel 4.19. After X.org and Mesa updates, will that finally allow me to drop the horrors of Nvidia driver management for a full AMDGPU open source gaming platform? One can hope!

Phoronix: Trying Out AMDGPU DRM-Next Ahead Of Linux 4.20~5.0