Graphics journey nVidia to Intel to AMD - issues and advice

[oshunluvr]

My machine is described in my sig...

My old nVidia GTX 750 Ti died a couple months ago so I switched to my CPU based Intel HD 530. For whatever reason, it would not drive my 3840x1600 monitor at anything above 30Hz via HDMI 2.0 so I went shopping. Yesterday my new XFX Radeon RX 580 GTS XXX OC+. Cost me $200 which seems reasonable given the performance. I play an occasional game that uses graphics, but I'm not a full time gamer so this cards specs seemed sufficient. It least I'm back using DP so I'm running at 75Hz again.

Right away I noticed an anomaly: GRUB, although graphics mode set at 3840x1600 with "Keep" also set, does this weird thing where the screen resolution look OK, but it is not centered. Hard to describe, but the image is shifted up and right and wraps around so the upper right part of the menu is on the lower left part of the monitor. Basically the lower left corner is 4-5 inches up and 7-8 inches right, but due to the screen wrapping the whole menu is visible. To make it worse - the center jumps around, seemingly keeping time with the launch countdown timer - 5 seconds to select a menu choice and about 5 jumps. Also, the response of the grub menu is extremely slow - again seemingly one line move up or down the menu list per second. This did not happen using the nVidia or Intel graphics. I'll try to grab some pics or video of it with my phone if I remember to do it next time I boot.

IDK if there's some setting I can change in GRUB to make this not happen. However, this GRUB is hosted by Mint Cinnamon based on 18.04 and I have other issues with it, like it won't honor the grub default entry. So I'm about to try another distro for GRUB, IF I can get one to install without EFI.

Anyway, I haven't used an AMD card since about 1998 so I'm totally new to the software. I downloaded the AMD Pro software but I haven't installed anything other the the standard driver from the repo. IDK if there's any benefit to the Pro version or not. My card has some special features, like control over the clock speed, so I'm mostly curious as to if I can gain any access to those while using Linux.

[claydoh]

Anyway, I haven't used an AMD card since about 1998 so I'm totally new to the software. I downloaded the AMD Pro software but I haven't installed anything other the the standard driver from the repo. IDK if there's any benefit to the Pro version or not. My card has some special features, like control over the clock speed, so I'm mostly curious as to if I can gain any access to those while using Linux.

The AMDGPU-PRO driver is useful only to "professional workstation" use, whatever that means, so it is not useful for most people, and cann actually hurt gaming performance (in m y own experience it definitively did) It is actually based on the open amdgpu drivers, which AMD actively supports. One can get performance improvements via upgrading Mesa and Vulkan via PPA, though 20.04 is fairly well up to date at the moment. I use this one: https://launchpad.net/~ernstp/+archive/ubuntu/mesaaco

Actually, I never re-enabled this after the 20.04 upgrade on Neon, lol! Never noticed.

I have a used RX 480, which is the same physical hardware as the 580, with yours having higher clock speeds, etc etc. so performance supposedly is fairly similar.
I have no idea about your grub, unless your Mint setup has an Nvidia specific tweak, perhaps? Mine is stock Neon, with the screen resolution set to 1920x1080 which I assume I added as at the tine I set it up, it was using the TV as the main monitor.

Software - There is no 'official' GUI software like Nvidia Settings at all.

I don't play with OC'ing much, so I use software called Radeon Profile




This has basic overclocking sliders, and fan control, which was useful for me as my first 480 ended up being previously used for mining.

Alternatives I have no experience with:
https://github.com/BoukeHaarsma23/WattmanGTK
https://github.com/Lurkki14/tuxclocker

And of course there is the command line.





So, in the end, I personally find AMD, at least the lesser, more affordable cards like ours, to be so much a better experience than Nvidia due to significantly less futzing - I've needed no xorg tweaks over the three cards, no extra drivers to install, no rejiggering with each driver update. No Plasma oddities to troubleshoot. AMD cards have become extremely popular, and there is vastly more Linux gaming -specific content searchable on the web than there used to be not all that long ago.

But software tools are a bit lacking in some ways,

So forget ATI from 1998, that was a sh** show for sure. Well it was for me that year with my first computer (which also was the first one I ran Linux on ).

[mr_raider]

Use the default kernel and mesa stack. That should be enough for an older RX 500 series card. If you dabble in gaming with dxvk/proton you can upgrade mesa with a PPA.

I use grub in a 2560x1080 setup and it's fine.

Try removing the 4k setting for grub and just running default settings.

[oshunluvr]

The grub thing is weird. The screen shifts each to time it's updated, that's why its once per second - the timer marker causes the jump. Odd that it never did that with the nvidia or Intel cards. Gotta be something in the AMD driver.

I installed that software Clay. When I started playing with the fan speed I discovered if I select "Auto" a shrill noise comes from the fans! It's not related to the speed because I can manually select any speed with no noise.I had to reboot to make it go away. Super annoying.

Also annoying to a lesser degree: There's a bright blue LED right by the 8-pin power plug that's counter to my Aura color scheme - red "heartbeat". So far I have been unable to determine what it indicates if anything and how to turn it off. It sits right behind a water tube so it's magnified which makes it worse:


Eventually I'll be re-doing that pipe and it won't be so close the the video card.

[mr_raider]

The grub thing is weird. The screen shifts each to time it's updated, that's why its once per second - the timer marker causes the jump. Odd that it never did that with the nvidia or Intel cards. Gotta be something in the AMD driver.

The AMD driver is in the kernel. During the grub bootloader screen, the kernel has not loaded yet.

I use KDE neon so the grub config is a very different.

[oshunluvr]

The AMD driver is in the kernel. During the grub bootloader screen, the kernel has not loaded yet.

Excellent point. Still doesn't explain why AMD is doing it and the others didn't. I guess I'm thinking there must be a kernel parameter needed for grub.

I use KDE neon so the grub config is a very different.

I use both Mint Cinnamon (18.04) and KDEneon 20.04 and they both do it. Or at least the issue carries over. I suppose it's not actually KDEneon GRUB, just the grub menu.

Clearly I need to install some other distro and use grub from it instead. I was unsuccessful with KDEneon 20.04 to bare metal because Ubuntu now forces EFI and I'm not using it.

[mr_raider]

Excellent point. Still doesn't explain why AMD is doing it and the others didn't. I guess I'm thinking there must be a kernel parameter needed for grub.

I use both Mint Cinnamon (18.04) and KDEneon 20.04 and they both do it. Or at least the issue carries over. I suppose it's not actually KDEneon GRUB, just the grub menu.

Clearly I need to install some other distro and use grub from it instead. I was unsuccessful with KDEneon 20.04 to bare metal because Ubuntu now forces EFI and I'm not using it.

Have you tried switching outputs? I.e. from one DP to anotejr DP? Or changing to HDMI?

I strongly suspect the refresh rate is not being reported properly between the monitor and card and grub is defaulting to 60Hz. This maybe glitch in the card firmware or monitor EDID.

Also you can try enbaling/disabling fast boot and full screen logo in your MB BIOS.

Unfortunately I don't have anything over 2560x1080 to test my card on. I do use dual screens with one rotated 90 degrees, and I can tell you the rotation is not fixed until after I log in to plasma.

[oshunluvr]

I haven't tried switching ports. I'll do that. My monitor works fine at 30, 60, and 75hz. I really only bought the card so I could go back to DP and 75hz as the mobo/built-in Intel didn't support either.

I'm going to replace my GRUB distro also. I suspect that will fix it.