ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 - Overheat issue

[Alex Deucher]

2010/7/1 Rafał Miłecki <zajec5 at gmail.com>:
> 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.


The default clocks should be safe; that's why they are the defaults.
However, dusty fans and heatsinks and poorly cooled cases could cause
problems.  The default clocks are not always the maximum clocks
supported by the cards.  There are "overclock" and performance modes
that are higher than the defaults that we don't support at the moment.
 The driver currently caps then to the default clocks.

Alex

>
> 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
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