Hello Tim, First you need to know the chipset name of your card in order to know it's family. To do that you need to run (or similar):
``` lspci | grep VGA ``` It's output on my desktop shows: ``` 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Ellesmere [Radeon RX 470/480] (rev ef) ``` This tells me that the chipset name of my card is Ellesmere, which is the POLARIS architecture. A quick look to [RadeonFeature][1] tells me that POLARIS is part of the [Volcanic Islands family][2]. The [gentoo wiki][3] might help too. Knowing the family is important, as it tells you how to tell the kernel to load the amdgpu driver before radeon. Because I suspect FirePro W4100 to be quite old, the [archlinux howtos][4] might be helpful to you. That being said, you might prefer installing the [proprietary drivers][5] if you plan to use a professional card. I suspect taking that road would come with its own set of problems. I hope this helps, Ludovic [1]: https://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/ [2]: https://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/#decoderringforengineeringvsmarketingnames [3]: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/AMDGPU#Feature_support [4]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AMDGPU#Enable_Southern_Islands_.28SI.29_and_Sea_Islands_.28CIK.29_support [5]: https://www.amd.com/en/support/professional-graphics/firepro/firepro-wx100-series/firepro-w4100 On 29/01/20 23:05, Tim Wallace via Dng wrote: > I have been happily running ascii but upgraded from my Intel built-in > graphics to an AMD FirePro W4100 because I do a lot of 4K video editing, > but no game-playing, and thought this 50W card would save energy and > work well with 4K. There is a nearly identical Nvidia card, but I > decided to support AMD, for easier Linux support, which has not been my > experience! > > The card booted OK under ascii but was using the Radeon Xorg driver > which gave flashing behavior from time to time, typical of a bad video > driver. I decided to try beowulf to get some newer versions of stuff. > > I installed a generic ascii on my other partition, then did the upgrade, > from an xterm, perhaps not the smartest idea but it worked. When I ran > synaptic, it added and removed hundreds of packages! Not exactly > efficient, but I was left with a working system. The only issue was > that my Samsung M.2 SSD only boots as efi, and install systems don't > seem to realize that, resulting in boot failure or boot install failure, > but I used the rEFInd program to recover everything, and all seems good > with both beowulf and ascii. > > The situation now is that I can't get the correct X video driver > working, which should be the amdgpu one, under either ascii or beowulf. > (Full screen 4K video plays great at 60 fps under mpv, with nothing > dropped and no flashes.) I did try disabling pretty much all the > acceleration options on the radeon driver, but that did not help with > the flashing. > > Details: > Motherboard ASRock Z97 Extreme6, i7-4790K, 16 GB, latest Bios 2.80 > > added non-free repository, and installed firmware. On boot, both radeon > and amdgpu kernel modules are installed. When X starts, the radeon > driver is used. The xorg.conf output by Xorg -configure calls for the > amdgpu driver, but trying to run, get fatal error: > > amdgpu_device_initialize: DRM version is 2.50.0 but this kernel is only > compatible with 3.x.x > > > Under ascii, the radeon driver is called for by Xorg -configure, and the > error when forcing amdgpu is almost the same, except > > ... DRM version is 2.49.0... > > It seems that there are some incompatibilities built into both ascii and > beowulf when it comes to this card. I could compile a kernel (which I > used to do all the time in the 90's, and probably haven't done for 10 > years) if that would help with the DRM version issue. > > I tried the Ubuntu version of the proprietary driver from AMD, and it > complained about the kernel version. I could compile a kernel to match > the Ubuntu one, I suppose, and re-try the proprietary driver, if anyone > thinks that would help. I'm not looking for the fastest performance in > the world, though, just stability! > > Any advice? > > --Tim > > > > _______________________________________________ > Dng mailing list > Dng@lists.dyne.org > https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng >
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