Nvidia to AMD GPU

[Beerislife]

Right now I'm running a 4Gb NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti/PCIe/SSE2 (with a TDP of 75W) which I think was first released in 2016.

I'm tired of getting black screens when the kernel and drivers update and having to muck around with the proprietary drivers to get max performance, so I ordered a 4Gb AMD Radeon RX 6400 AERO card that was released this spring (TDP of 53W) That should make my PSU happier!

I see the prices of video cards are slowly creeping up again so bit the bullet before they become (more) unaffordable!

It should arrive today by noon today and I can swap them out and put the NVIDIA up for sale.

[claydoh]

A tip or three when switching:
Completely revert back to the 'nouveau' driver beforehand, and do an autoremove to make sure any stray Nvidia packages are removes as well

You should be able to switch by running ubuntu-drivers command

ubuntu-drivers list
ubuntu drivers install {whatever it offers as a name for Nouveau}

Again, afterwards, do an autoremove, and seek out any stray nvidia-* packages that might be left behind.

Use Muon/synaptic to search for nvidia packages, or use dpkg -l | grep -i nvidia to ferret them out.

Check for and rename/remove /etc/X11/xorg.conf (you may or may not have one)
Also check for blacklist files in /etc/modprobe.d, such as nvidia-blacklists-nouveau.conf or similar, or files that contain references to nouveau - the module is blacklisted to keep it from loading, but without needing to uninstall it.

THEN, once you have things working without the Nvidia drivers, you can swap to the new card. it should Just Work (tm)


I had notes on this in here, somewhere, but I can't locate them, specifically for swapping. They are probably a little outdated, but the steps would have given me the path.


You might consider installing Kubuntu's Software Sources tool (software-properties-qt), find that in Muon, Synaptic or Discover, and use the Driver Manager to switch drivers.
But still, do an autoremove, search for stray packages, and remove any blacklists and xorg.conf files if present.

[Beerislife]

That was on my list to do. It's 11:20 here and it hasn't arrived yet so this will be a chore for tomorrow!

software-properties-qt is already installed and linked to software-properties-kde

It's a nice sunny hot day and there are cold beers waiting somewhere!

[Beerislife]

Well, that was totally painless! I used software-properties-kde to switch back to Nouveau and I *think* I located and removed everything Nvidia, rebooted, ran apt autoremove, checked Muon one more time and shut down.

I installed the card and it looks fine! X-Plane wasn't happy though. It crashed first time and the next time ran in OpenGl instead of Vulkan. It needs to update its config files I suppose!

[claydoh]

What icon theme is that?


For vulkan, check that you have mesa-vulkan-drivers installed, I can't recall for sure if it is there by default or not, though I believe it should be.

[Beerislife]

Papirus Dark from:

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:papirus/papirus

It's more up-to-date than from the Buntu repo. I also add papirus-folders to change the colour.

mesa-vulkan-drivers is installed.

[Beerislife]

X-Plane 11 continues to crash with Vulkan but works with OpenGl. This is weird because I also have the X-Plane 12 demo on the same SSD and that is Vulkan only and loads just fine!

I also update Mesa from

ppa:kisak/kisak-mesa

On the off-chance it would help but sadly no!

I'll play around with it later, I have to go to the doc soon to get a meds refill before I head to Thailand next Monday!

Edit: There's now a GUI for changing the Papirus Folders colours:

https://github.com/ItzSelenux/papiru...leases/tag/1.5

[Beerislife]

Well, I did a search for the error I was getting an in one thread the user was recommended to try the open source AMDVLK driver.

I duly located and installed it and X-Plane 11 starts with Vulkan enabled!

I'm now a happy bunny!

https://github.com/GPUOpen-Drivers/AMDVLK/releases

[claydoh]

Lol, I forget that one, I don't have it installed, but x-plane installed and ran fine for me. I assume I am using the stock 'RADV" (Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver).
I know I was using AMDVLK in my previous install, before I upgraded to a larger m.2 drive and did a clean install some months back.
This is on the trial dowenloaded from them directly.


To use the native mesa RADV vulkan, if using Steam for the game, you should be able to pass the parameter AMD_VULKAN_ICD=RADV %command% as a game's launch option.
or sub "AMDVLK" . Some things may work better with one over the other .



The kisak ppa is a good choice, I use it myself, mainly to get Mesa 23.x, but now that Ubuntu LTS upgraded this to 23.0, there isn't as much a boost as there was when they were still on Mesa 22.x

[claydoh]

The kisak ppa is a good choice,

And having said that, it seems the curremt Mesa (23.1.6) has a bad memory leak on games using Unreal Engine, fixed in 23.1.7 whenever that comes out, or via git builds (via different PPA), or maybe revert back to stock Ubuntu's older version.
I just bought two games that would not play in Steam - a first for me in aaaaages.

[Beerislife]

I wanted to install CoreCtrl so I could set my cards performance to maximum when running X-Plane so added the PPA from this tutorial:

https://fostips.com/corectrl-adjust-...per-app-basis/

But couldn't find the CoreCtrl app in that repo!

[oshunluvr]

Did you miss this link?

https://launchpad.net/~ernstp/+archive/ubuntu/mesarc

[claydoh]

Did you miss this link?

https://launchpad.net/~ernstp/+archive/ubuntu/mesarc

To add to this, do note that this PPA also provides bleeding edge versions of Mesa and other things, which updates VERY often, even daily.

so added the PPA from this tutorial:

https://fostips.com/corectrl-adjust-...per-app-basis/

I assume you also followed the instruction to not only add the ppa, but also created the config file to keep your mesa from being updated as well?
The source for the info in your how-to

I use this PPA for the application myself, with no issue finding and installing it.
It won't show in Discover (not uncommon with third party apps in PPAs), so you will need to install it manually.

sudo apt install corectrl

Don't be surprised if there aren't much in the way of controls for your card compared to the screenshots.
My old RX480 had many more dials and knobs compared to my new RX6650 XT
You also will need to add a kernel config to grub to allow this to actually control things. See corectrl's setup instruction on their wiki. This important info is missing in the how-to link.

If you want to set up corectrl to not need a password, use the instructions for polkit <0.106.

[Beerislife]

Something is definitely wrong here even with the PPA enabled and running apt update

[Beerislife]

OK. It wasn't found from the terminal but it was in Muon so it's now installed!