Unstable performance on gaming (AMD GPU)

General system Gaming, sound and video
1

hii

okay this is something that happens since i moved to endeavour and with more than one game:

  • i install and play a game, good fps rate (or according to the expected)
  • at the next day (or some days after) i play the game again and it has a terrible performance, it even works better using the igpu (Intel HD 520… my dGPU is a Radeon R7 M370).

I have experimented this with: Skyrim, GTA IV, SuperTuxKart

And then when i make a pacman -Syu and the card works great again :v until the thing repeats days after… I guess its a drivers problema

here is some info if needed:

  • Intel core i7 6500u (iGPU HD 530)

  • 16gb ram

  • Radeon R7 M370 as dGPU

  • Kernel version: Linux 6.6.58-1-lts

  • DE: Gnome 46.5
    Im using wayland

thankks

2

Can you share the output of pacman -Q | grep -E "radeon|amd|mesa"

3 
$ pacman -Q | grep -E "radeon|amd|mesa"
amdvlk 2024.Q3.3-1
lib32-amdvlk 2024.Q3.3-1
lib32-mesa 1:24.2.5-1
lib32-vulkan-radeon 1:24.2.5-1
mesa 1:24.2.5-1
mesa-utils 9.0.0-5
radeontop 1.4-3
vulkan-radeon 1:24.2.5-1
xf86-video-amdgpu 23.0.0-2
4

I would remove these. You have two different vulkan drivers.

5

should i remove both or keep one?

6

Both, as indicated by the 2024.Q3.3-1. Same driver, lib32-amdvlk is just the 32bit driver for amdvlk

7

Remove both of those.

You are keeping:

vulkan-radeon
lib32-vulkan-radeon
8

did you choose amdvlk over vulkan-radeon for any specific reason?

i removed lib32-amdvlk, the game worked as it should
then i removed amdvlk and it started to have a bad performance again

should i remove vulkan-radeon and install amdvlk again?

9

Yes, it offers better and more consistent performance. It is also more actively maintained.

I would not recommend that. It is possible that something else is causing your performance issues.

10

No clue if it helps,

but you’ve got mesa-utils installed. But the lib32-mesa-utils is missing. But that shouldn’t be the issue, it’s just inconsistent.

In addition to that, the optional packages mesa-vdpau as well as vulkan-mesa-layers aren’t installed. You could try to install those as well.

Last but not least, xf86-video-amdgpu isn’t related to vulkan-radeon or mesa and is not strictly required. I think you can remove that package as well.

1 Like
11

okay i deleted vulkan-radeon and updated amdvlk.
now when i open lutris, this error goes on terminal

ERROR: [Loader Message] Code 0 : vkCreateInstance: Found no drivers!
Cannot create Vulkan instance.
This problem is often caused by a faulty installation of the Vulkan driver or attempting to use a GPU that does not support Vulkan.

in another try i deleted amdvlk and kept vulkan-radeon, the drivers got detected but the game performance was awful (as the other times).

So i think the bad performance in games is fault of vulkan-radeon, and for any reason amdvlk is not working

12

I think your GPU R7 M370 is GCN 1.0 which is Southern Islands. You may need to try adding the following kernel parameters.

radeon.si_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AMDGPU#Selecting_the_right_driver

13

i had already added those

14

Have you done it correctly? :thinking:

15

Hello and welcome,

Since there’s no official support for GCN 1.0 GPU by AMD, it’s been experimental for years, you can’t expect to have stable performance, I’ve been through this with a R7 360 card before.

1 Like
16

hm… i guess, but im not sure.

i enabled it in the file /etc/modprobe.d/amdgpu.conf as the arch wiki says
i also put this on /etc/default/grub:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="radeon.si_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1"
17

hello,
what problems did you had with that card?
searching on internet i find that yeah there are stability problmems with amdgpu and CGN 1.0 cards… but i think the problems are not as strange as what is happening to me.

lately ive been trying to solve this, but when the problem seems to be solved it fails again at the next sesion:

  • When i do a pacman -Syu and restart the laptop the performance is as good as expected, at the next day it has bad performace again
  • same with gamemode, i enabled it with systemctl, the gpu worked good, at the next day it didnt
  • same with changing the kernel

its like if a config is undone when i turn off the lap or something.

18

Are you certain that you don’t use dracut ?

As the kernel command line would be specified in /etc/dracut.conf.d/cmdline.conf and should look like this:

#cmdline.conf 

kernel_cmdline+=" radeon.si_support=0 "
kernel_cmdline+=" amdgpu.si_support=1 "

And yes, the spaces are required.

19

i just did it
and still have the performance problem

20

Well, I can only speculate. But as @vazicebon mentioned, he had similiar troubles.
My guess is that switching between iGPU und dGPU is the main culprit. But I’m only aware of GPU switching for nVidia cards, not AMD unfortunately.

1 Like