Radeon R6 on HP Elitebook 725 G3 - opensource driver

simeonov · 2023-06-05 11:36

Guys, I got this lappy today and I already installed 4.12 Gemini with Plasma... its an HP EliteBook 725 G3. So my question is regarding this GPU
It's supposed to be better than Intel Integrated Graphics, but it doesn't seem to do much for me...

And I'm talking about Half-Life on GoldSrc through Wine... it's a pretty old mofo game and should give a decent FPS rate on this gpu, but
sadly it still runs on maximum 60 fps, while some game mods make it 15-20 fps and there are stutters!

I know, I know - "Linux and gaming, u mad?" But it's 2023, c'mon... So - I read in a debian article that if you remove the proprietary drivers and install opensource ones (amdgpu or something like that), the graphics card should perform much better. Now, I'm pretty much a newbie in linux, so I don't wanna botch something up.

Guys, please tell me - is Radeon R6 THAT bad of a GPU that it would run a 20-yr old game on 30 fps, or... is it the driver?
If installing the opensource driver would improve things, I'd pretty much like to try, but I'm gonna need some guidance from someone more experienced as to
how to do that under Q4OS. Also, I can't seem to find and install amdgpu-fan on Q4OS anywhere...

So please fellas, anyone who can lend a hand?

bin · 2023-06-06 06:42

You should be using Steam/Proton https://www.protondb.com/app/70 https://wiki.debian.org/Steam

Last edited by bin (2023-06-06 06:45)

tlmiller76 · 2023-06-06 15:47

Can you post which drivers are actually being used. This I would think should use Radeon by dafault (which is open source, but the OLD open source driver that had been reverse engineered, thus performance was...terrible), while the proprietary fglrx driver I would think would fail to even install in q4os due to how long it's been since fglrx had a new version come out to keep compatibility with kernels. AMDGPU, the current open source driver, should work with this APU, but I don't really know if it'll load by default since this is one of those tweener APU's that don't always recognize that they support amdgpu correctly in the system.

Last edited by tlmiller76 (2023-06-06 15:47)

simeonov · 2023-06-06 20:40

tlmiller76 wrote:

Can you post which drivers are actually being used. This I would think should use Radeon by dafault (which is open source, but the OLD open source driver that had been reverse engineered, thus performance was...terrible), while the proprietary fglrx driver I would think would fail to even install in q4os due to how long it's been since fglrx had a new version come out to keep compatibility with kernels. AMDGPU, the current open source driver, should work with this APU, but I don't really know if it'll load by default since this is one of those tweener APU's that don't always recognize that they support amdgpu correctly in the system.

Here's some info on the gpu, at least those are the commands goodle spitted out of the top, I'm not sure if what we need is here...

viktors@viktor-hpelitebook725g3:~$ lspci | grep VGA
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Wani [Radeon R5/R6/R7 Graphics] (rev c5)
viktors@viktor-hpelitebook725g3:~$ find /dev -group video
/dev/dri/card0
/dev/fb0
/dev/media0
/dev/video1
/dev/video0
viktors@viktor-hpelitebook725g3:~$ glxinfo | grep -i vendor
server glx vendor string: SGI
client glx vendor string: Mesa Project and SGI
Vendor: AMD (0x1002)
OpenGL vendor string: AMD

simeonov · 2023-06-08 13:24

OK, so I don't know if q4os uses the proprietary driver, or it's the amdgpu version, but...

I managed to download the amdgpu driver from AMD website, but the package is for Ubuntu, and upon installation it requires these:

libgcc-5-dev
and
libstdc++-5-dev

and these libraries are not listed in debian repo, because they're outdated.
I might try installing them manually, but they got a helluva dependency list... so yeah, that would be quite tedious, idk...

From the command lspci in my previous post it doesn't show specifically driver version and number, nor the R6's model but I thinki its 8700B apu...

Any advice on how to proceed?

simeonov · 2023-06-08 13:34

UPDATE: I managed to add amdgpu repo and tried installing with sudo apt, and the installation goes to 95% and freezes at:

Building initial module for 5.10.0-23-amd64

Doesn't make further progress, no errors, no output, just freezes. Over 10mins now.

tlmiller76 · 2023-06-08 16:00

You REALLY don't want amdgpu-pro. That's only for if you're doing workstation level graphics work, it actually has worse gaming performance than amdgpu.

Post output of

inxi -G

to show which driver it's currently using.

simeonov · 2023-06-09 09:39

tlmiller76 wrote:

You REALLY don't want amdgpu-pro. That's only for if you're doing workstation level graphics work, it actually has worse gaming performance than amdgpu.
Post output of
inxi -G
to show which driver it's currently using.

Apparently, all I needed to do is add two options to the grub boot config, amdgpu was already installed, it just wasn't enabled:

This was set to radeon in /etc/default/grub:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="amdgpu.cik_support=1 amdgpu.si_support=1 radeon.si_support=0 radeon.cik_support=0 quiet splash profile"

viktor@q4os-desktop:~/Свалени$ sudo lshw -c video
[sudo] password for viktor:
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Wani [Radeon R5/R6/R7 Graphics]
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
physical id: 1
bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0
version: c5
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=amdgpu latency=0
resources: irq:42 memory:c0000000-cfffffff memory:d0000000-d07fffff ioport:2000(size=256) memory:d0d00000-d0d3ffff memory:c0000-dffff

viktor@q4os-desktop:~/Свалени$ inxi -G
Graphics: Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Wani [Radeon R5/R6/R7 Graphics] driver: amdgpu v: kernel
Device-2: Chicony HP HD Camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: amdgpu resolution: 1366x768~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: AMD Radeon R6 Graphics (CARRIZO DRM 3.40.0 5.10.0-23-amd64 LLVM 11.0.1) v: 4.6 Mesa 20.3.5

So, if anyone has a similar problem, guys just edit the file:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

Find the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT
change the driver to: amdgpu.cik_support=1 amdgpu.si_support=1 radeon.si_support=0 radeon.cik_support=0
save and reboot.

Thanks for the help, this seems to have done the trick!

Last edited by simeonov (2023-06-09 09:58)

Q4OS Forum

#1 2023-06-05 11:36

Radeon R6 on HP Elitebook 725 G3 - opensource driver

#2 2023-06-06 06:42

Re: Radeon R6 on HP Elitebook 725 G3 - opensource driver

#3 2023-06-06 15:47

Re: Radeon R6 on HP Elitebook 725 G3 - opensource driver

#4 2023-06-06 20:40

Re: Radeon R6 on HP Elitebook 725 G3 - opensource driver

#5 2023-06-08 13:24

Re: Radeon R6 on HP Elitebook 725 G3 - opensource driver

#6 2023-06-08 13:34

Re: Radeon R6 on HP Elitebook 725 G3 - opensource driver

#7 2023-06-08 16:00

Re: Radeon R6 on HP Elitebook 725 G3 - opensource driver

#8 2023-06-09 09:39

Re: Radeon R6 on HP Elitebook 725 G3 - opensource driver

Board footer