ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 - Overheat issue

[Rafał Miłecki]

W dniu 1 lipca 2010 12:08 użytkownik Donato Capitella
<d.capitella at gmail.com> napisał:
> Thanks for replying Rafal. I don't happen to be very expert with xorg
> power management, could you point to any relevant link? What options
> in xorg could be related to my issue? Has someone had this problem
> before? I could post here the output of some command to let you know a
> bit more about how my card and driver are working, but I don't know
> how.

It's common problem, because by default GPU works in it's maximum
performance mode (highest engine clock, memory, voltage). Even when
you do not play any game, GPU won't downclock itself - it has to be
done by driver.

UMS is mode where DDX driver (working in userspace) is responsible for
everything about mode setting, power management, etc. Current UMS
driver has only some basic power management which you can control with
xorg.conf (see "man radeon" for details). radeon just reclocks your
engine and it's static, so your GPU won't upclock on higher GPU usage
(3D game).

KMS is mode where kernel manages your GPU.
1) KMS power management in 2.6.34 works but is not really complex. It
simply reclocks your engine when GPU is not used (no 3D game). This
makes your GPU much cooler, but still lacks memory reclocking and
voltage setting.
2) KMS pm in 2.6.35 has more options and can reclock memory and
voltage. This way you get even cooler GPU and much less power
consumption (due to voltage setting). You can switch between "low",
"high", "dynpm" modes, not just "dynpm" like in case of 2.6.34

So:
1) UMS: only engine, static
2) KMS .34: only engine, only dynamic
3) KMS .35: engine, mem, voltage, many profiles


> Do you suggest to wait until the 2.6.35 kernel is released?

You may try 2.6.35-rc3 even now. There are however few (power
management) issues that will be addressed in 2.6.35-rc4. You may hit
problems related to them or not. However as 2.6.35-rc4 should be
released soon, you may want to wait a bit longer and test this one.


P.S.
Please do not "top post" and use "Reply all" to send your questions to
both: responder and mailing list.

-- 
Rafał