Radeon Dynamic Power Management Not Working

[andrewm]

Hi there,

The 'profile' power management works fine with the radeon driver, but when I enable dynamic power management X refuses to start. I have tried two ways on enabling it - grub radeon.dynpm=1 and /etc/modprobe.d/ 'options radeon dynpm=1'. Can anyone give me a hint?

When I use the boot option radeon.dynpm=1 (I have tried adding radeon.modeset=1 additionally), the boot sequence falls back to the basic graphical boot and then fails when starting X - I get a black screen.

# lspci -nn | grep VGA
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc M880G [Mobility Radeon HD 4200] [1002:9712]

# lsmod | grep radeon
radeon                792595  3 
ttm                    68749  1 radeon
drm_kms_helper         40141  1 radeon
drm                   226004  5 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper
i2c_algo_bit           13156  1 radeon
i2c_core               37955  6 videodev,i2c_piix4,radeon,drm_kms_helper,drm,i2c_algo_bit

There doesn't appear to be a dynpm parameter (at least in my version of the radeon module), but there is dynclks if that helps.

#modinfo radeon

vermagic:       3.2.9-1.fc16.x86_64 SMP mod_unload 
parm:           no_wb:Disable AGP writeback for scratch registers (int)
parm:           modeset:Disable/Enable modesetting (int)
parm:           dynclks:Disable/Enable dynamic clocks (int)
parm:           r4xx_atom:Enable ATOMBIOS modesetting for R4xx (int)
parm:           vramlimit:Restrict VRAM for testing (int)
parm:           agpmode:AGP Mode (-1 == PCI) (int)
parm:           gartsize:Size of PCIE/IGP gart to setup in megabytes (32,64, etc)
 (int)
parm:           benchmark:Run benchmark (int)
parm:           test:Run tests (int)
parm:           connector_table:Force connector table (int)
parm:           tv:TV enable (0 = disable) (int)
parm:           audio:Audio enable (1 = enable) (int)
parm:           disp_priority:Display Priority (0 = auto, 1 = normal, 2 = high) (int)
parm:           hw_i2c:hw i2c engine enable (0 = disable) (int)
parm:           pcie_gen2:PCIE Gen2 mode (1 = enable) (int)
parm:           msi:MSI support (1 = enable, 0 = disable, -1 = auto) (int)

[andrewm]

Thanks, hmmm sorry I should have checked that

It appears that the driver doesn't support this anymore for some reason. I also tried using dynclks but this has no effect. I also tried echo dynpm > /sys/class/........./power_method but this had no effect too.

Power profiles do work, but just not well enough, I get 4h battery with the proprietary driver, 2h with the opensource. I just went back to check out the opensource driver to see if any improvements have been made since I last used it (just installed F16) but obviously not. I'll continue with the proprietary.

Thanks,
Andrew

Also spotted this option for Xorg.conf:

man radeon

Option "DynamicPM" "boolean"
              Enable  dynamic  power  mode switching.  This can help reduce heat and increase battery life by reducing power
              usage when the system is idle (DPMS active). The default is off.

[andrewm]

I tried all 3 of these options, and different combinations of these in my xorg.conf last night:

      Option  "ClockGating"  "true"
      Option  "ForceLowPowerMode" "true"
      Option  "DynamicPM"  "true"

I also tried them with and without KMS - boot option radeon.modeset=0 turns KMS off and UMS would then be active, right?

Thanks,
Andrew

Have you read any of this?:

http://www.x.org/wiki/radeonBuildHowTo

http://wiki.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature...gement_Options