AMD FirePro W7000 poor graphics performance, Fedora 28

asked 2018-10-24 10:16:40 -0500

HXH
23 ●1 ●5 ●3

Hi Folks.

I have been researching for days on this and while I am sure it is a dead horse I am beating here, I am just running in circles and I am hoping someone could point me in the right direction.

HP Z620 Workstation
32 GB ECC ram
Intel Xeon E5-2660, 2.2 Ghz x8
AMD FirePro W7000, 4GB GCN 1.0
Fedora 28, standard installed Fedora repo
Samsung UHD 4k monitor (prehaps the issue?)

I have read the AMDGPU pages regarding my particular card and the AMD provided drivers are not compatible with Fedora 28. Originally I was using Red Hat 7.5 and even there I was unable to install the driver (always received some type of lib error that was not resolved using yum).

Overall the system is quite laggy on graphics. The Gnome Activities > Show Applications animation looks like 5 frames per second - I can live with that, but using Gimp is quite painful. Generally doing things such as resizing docked panels reminds me of using a grossly underpowered machine. Screen redraws are very slow etc.

Perhaps mistakenly I purchased the W7000 graphics card because before using the HP Workstation I had a home built PC with an AMD R9 380 graphics card from which I was able to install the amdgpu drivers and all was hunky-dory. Unfortunately that card is not compatible with the power supply in this HP which provides only 6 pin for the GPU power (the old card needed an 8 pin) - since I had that nice AMD card experience, I upgraded the HP's original nvidia Quadro 2000 (1GB) thinking I would have a smooth experience.

Can anyone offer any advise? I am certainly not afraid of reading documentation etc. I just haven't found documentation that seemed relevant to Fedora. Of course if the answer is burning the 240 euros on this recently purchased, used, W7000 as well - I suppose so be it - I am just not looking to spend several hundred dollars on a graphics card.

Thank you!!!! Hxh

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answered 2018-10-25 07:25:07 -0500

ozeszty

1923 ●57 ●37

Hi,

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI and https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/... should be a good read.

Unfortunately Fedora 28 is stuck on mesa 18.0.5, but soon F29 will be out with up to date mesa and other updates.

Make sure all leftovers from Quadro are removed (driver, kernel parameters, xorg config).

For W7000 you could also install xorg-x11-drv-amdgpu and then use radeon.si_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1 kernel parameters to switch to newer kernel driver supporting RADV Vulkan driver. For 1st gen GCN GPUs, like yours, it's considered experimental, but worth a try.

Whether this was a good buy depends mostly on your use case. If you want to use it e.g. for OpenCL, you'll be better off with AMD's proprietary driver on one of supported systems.

Here's the newest version https://www.amd.com/en/support/profes...

Here are installation instructions with script helping install all the requirements on RHEL https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/rel...

Unless programs you're using require AMD's proprietary driver, open-source driver (available in Fedora) generally should be better.

Note that AMD R9 380 is 3rg gen GCN and it's supported better than 1st gen (there are more features supported by all open-source AMD driver used in Fedora).

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Thank you! adding the parameters after boot and installing the xorg-x11-drv-amdgpu was the key. The performance is a bit better, but not quite enough to know that the radeon driver is as acceptable. I will continue with the amdgpu though by adding it at boot for a few days and see whats what.

I think the performance issues I am seeing is just a collection of little things that add up... including a 4k monitor.

The help is much appreciated!!

HXH ( 2018-10-27 06:28:50 -0500 )edit

You're welcome.

You can add (and remove if later needed) those kernel parameters permanently https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/...

You could try to live boot some fresh Fedora 29 images (those are pre-relese images, but very close to what will be released in the coming week) to see if newer packages improve things: https://www.happyassassin.net/nightli... (this is website of Fedora QA team member).

ozeszty ( 2018-10-27 17:45:19 -0500 )edit

4.19 kernel has just been released and soon will be available in Fedora (https://communityblog.fedoraproject.o...), it also contains lots of fixes that could potentially help.

ozeszty ( 2018-10-27 17:59:29 -0500 )edit

very awesome! Thank you!! I have been adding the parameters manually at boot - mostly because I am a bit too busy at the moment to research the "how to" on that, but you just handed it to me. Thanks very much!!

HXH ( 2018-11-05 05:42:00 -0500 )edit

Also, I suppose 4.19 will be an update? I upgraded to Fedora 29 and it shows 4.18.16-300.

Thanks again!

HXH ( 2018-11-05 05:43:20 -0500 )edit

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answered 2018-10-24 12:34:57 -0500

heliosstyx
555 ●3 ●81 ●34

updated 2018-10-24 13:08:17 -0500

Here is a link for you. I hope it will help, but you must be able to read German: https://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/Grafi...

Here is another source: https://www.amd.com/de/support/profes...

Your Amd FirePro W7000 is normally used in professional enterprise workstations. I see no reasons why it should not run under the above mentioned operating systems. For further questions you should contact AMD's support.

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Thanks for the reply. I used google translator for the article. It didn't reveal anything I have not read, but its a good read for those that may want to weight nvidia vs amd.

HXH ( 2018-10-27 06:31:46 -0500 )edit

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AMD FirePro W7000 poor graphics performance, Fedora 28

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