[Bug 36438] ATI card fan is always on with opensource radeon driver

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36438

--- Comment #16 from higuita at gmx.net 2011-12-27 18:24:21 PST ---
i'm might just be adding noise, but this might also help some people...

** WARNING ** 

THIS CAN BREAK YOUR CARD
MY SETTINGS ARE FOR *MY* CARD, EACH CARD IS DIFFERENT
IF YOU DONT WANT TO LOSE YOUR PC, DONT EVEN TRY TO DO THIS!!
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

** WARNING **

i found that my video card bios (HD2600xt, AGP, on a mid-tower) only had one
power profile (high), no matter what profile i send to the
/sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile, the
/sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/radeon_pm_info stayed the same...

i tried to underclock the card with the rovclock, but it too old and doesnt
support current chips... 

after some research i found a windows util (sadly its windows only) that allow
one to download the card bios and change the power profiles and re-upload that
changed bios. It is a dangerous thing, one might brick the card with wrong
settings, so i tested with one older card and tested all frequency settings in
windows, using the amd/ati drivers overclock setting and all worked fine

so i tried in my main card and i backup my old firmware, prepare a boot floppy
to restore it and start to change the profiles...i tried always small steps,
with the low profile being the testing one and the default always the normal
settings, so i could test in linux the switch between profiles and detect the
problems, and fall back to the default with a simple cold boot

i keep the same boot settings (so less risk of breaking things), keep the max
freq (800MHz @ 1.2V), but created a mid an lower profiles with less 1.1V and
with the card running at 350MHz and 200MHz

with this changed, and running the low profile, i dropped the temperature from
my card from about 80ºC to 59ºC and the card heatsink fan also run slower

of course, the card is also running slower, but i'm not using 3D and for 2D its
fine. when i need more graphic power, i can manually change the power profile
to high.

the url for that windows software  is http://www.techpowerup.com/rbe/

now, this is a last thing we would want to do, but might help with broken card
bios like mine, where the power profiles are broken or nonexistent and help
people break free from the card builder settings.

also, it would be a lot better that someone created a new linux side
under/overclock tool, specially using the radeon modules/drivers. Maybe this
tool could help debuging and improving the power control of radeon cards in
linux, but creating various profiles and comparing what changes between then.

with this maybe we could control the power profiles from linux, without messing
with the card bios.

finally, and to compare, this same card, running in windows, without underclock
runs idle at 53ºC and under heavy usage about 90ºC, so windows is clearly
sending some type of IDLE command to the GPU that cuts power and heat usage.
finding and using that GPU IDLE command would also help a lot solving this
problem

again, this is dangerous, its not for everyone (you must understand how thing
works and what are the risks) and requires a MS Windows usage. i have no idea
if this works on laptops.

good luck
higuita

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