User fixes to speed up desktop performance with on Linux 4.10.11, Fedora 24, GNOME Shell 3.20.4

Tue May 9 22:09:42 UTC 2017

Hi everyone,

Just to let those being interested know:
With very limited changes I was lucky enough to boost the graphical
performance of an Alienware (Dell) notebook considerably - please 
see HW, driver and other details for the machine where this happened 
at the end of this message.

Before these changes GUIs for Gnome settings were lagging like
hell when trying to open them, freezing the desktop for up 
to 3 or 4 secs. Now the same GUIs  open in not even a second or so. 

This change seems crucial, because before, over the last months, the 
system every now and then froze completely at these times - 
even sysrq keys didn't help much in these instances for a clean
shutdown ...

xrandr, too, does seem to be faster now: before the  changes it often 
lagged, and seemed to freeze for two or three seconds e.g. when 
entering it without any options. Gone for now: xrandr now seems to
deliver output the same sec it is being asked for it ...

I have no idea whether these small changes are technically right: they
just seem to work ...
Also, I'm not sure whether it's the right approach to speed up the 
driver as I did, instead of unnerving the Gnome/gdm/Fedora developers
to fix possible bugs that seem to make the software lagging or freezing.
Problem really is that the moment the system crashed I don't remember
having seen relevant logs in journalctl for what was happening. Ever.

Hardware bugs? I don't know: Yesterday the BIOS didn't see the AMD GPU - I 
restarted the machine - and that seemed to fix it. Some short BIOS 
pre-boot test didn't find errors for the GPU ...

Just one thing I'm still looking for: the way radeon now works is that
it never seems to switch off, even at what I consider being small graphics 
loads. I will probably be looking for ways to change that: after all 
who heats the house when the sun is burning down .. :)

Oh, and this: S3 sleep works excellent here since I installed Fedora months 
ago. I'm glad about it - I rarely reboot, unless for maintenance etc.

So: if you see mistakes in what I did: I'd be happy to see corrections
for it. Thanks in anticipation for that.

Whatever: The changes that seem to help, and speed up the graphics:

1:

Installing an autostart file for Gnome I called
radeon.prio.desktop:

$ more ~/.config/autostart/radeon.prio.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Prioritize Radeon
Comment=In doubt start Radeon instead Intel for heavy graphics load
Exec=xrandr --setprovideroffloadsink "PITCAIRN @ pci:0000:01:00.0"  Intel
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=
GenericName=
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
X-GNOME-Autostart-Phase=Initialization
NoDisplay=true

2:
adding a "DRI_PRIME=1" variable to ~/.bashrc

and I tried to make sure, that both ~/.bash_profile and ~/.profile
read ~/.bashrc when logging in to Gnome

Specs, info - please be free to ask for more if you think it might help:
##############################

$ lspci -nnk |grep -A 6 -i vga
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller
[8086:0416] (rev 06)
	Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:05aa]
	Kernel driver in use: i915
	Kernel modules: i915
00:03.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio Controller [8086:0c0c]
(rev 06)
	Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:05aa]
	Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
--
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Neptune XT [Radeon HD 8970M]
[1002:6801]
	Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:05ad]
	Kernel driver in use: radeon
	Kernel modules: radeon
01:00.1 Audio device [0403]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Cape Verde/Pitcairn HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 7700/7800
Series] [1002:aab0]
	Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:aab0]
	Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel

############################# 

$ xrandr --listproviders
Providers: number : 3
Provider 0: id: 0x81 cap: 0xb, Source Output, Sink Output, Sink Offload crtcs: 4 outputs: 4 associated providers: 2
name:Intel
Provider 1: id: 0x59 cap: 0xf, Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload crtcs: 6 outputs: 4 associated
providers: 2 name:PITCAIRN @ pci:0000:01:00.0
Provider 2: id: 0x59 cap: 0xf, Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload crtcs: 6 outputs: 4 associated
providers: 2 name:PITCAIRN @ pci:0000:01:00.0

############################

# find  /sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/*  -name "*" | xargs grep -E
'*'                                                                                         
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/agpmode:0
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/aspm:-1
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/audio:-1
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/auxch:-1
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/backlight:-1
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/bapm:-1
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/benchmark:0
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/connector_table:0
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/deep_color:0
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/disp_priority:0
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/dpm:-1
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/dynclks:-1
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/fastfb:0
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/gartsize:2048
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/hard_reset:0
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/hw_i2c:0
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/lockup_timeout:10000
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/modeset:1
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/msi:-1
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/mst:0
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/no_wb:0
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/pcie_gen2:-1
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/r4xx_atom:0
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/runpm:-1
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/test:0
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/tv:1
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/use_pflipirq:2
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/uvd:1
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/vce:1
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/vm_block_size:12
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/vm_size:8
/sys/class/drm/card1/device/driver/module/holders/radeon/parameters/vramlimit:0

############################

$ dmesg | grep -E 'drm|radeon' | grep -iE 'firmware|microcode'
[    4.745410] [drm] Loading pitcairn Microcode
[    4.752001] [drm] Found VCE firmware/feedback version 50.0.1 / 17!

#############################

$ uname -a
Linux aw17 4.10.11-100.fc24.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Apr 18 17:25:04 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

#############################

$ ps ax | grep -iE 'wayland|xorg'
 1098 tty1     Ssl+   0:00 /usr/libexec/gdm-wayland-session gnome-session --autostart /usr/share/gdm/greeter/autostart
 1177 tty1     Sl+    0:00 /usr/bin/Xwayland :1024 -rootless -noreset -listen 4 -listen 5 -displayfd 6
 1285 ?        Ss     0:00 /usr/bin/abrt-dump-journal-xorg -fxtD
 8455 tty2     Sl+    1:16 /usr/libexec/Xorg vt2 -displayfd 3 -auth /run/user/1000/gdm/Xauthority -background none
-noreset -keeptty -verbose 3
14234 pts/0    S+     0:00 grep --color=auto -iE wayland|xorg

[please note that I explicitly did not start Gnome with the Wayland option at the Gnome login prompt]
##########################

Hardware specs:
http://ark.intel.com/products/75131/Intel-Core-i7-4900MQ-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz?q=i7-4900MQ
http://www.amd.com/Documents/AMD_Radeon_HD_8970M_GPU_Specs.pdf

###########################

There might be still more to report - but I try to not overload this email .... :)

Last, and definitely not least: Thanks to everyone for the software that
made all this possible.

Regards,
Wolfgang