AMDs drivers are destroying my install of Ubuntu

Hello,

I tried to find the answer to this but couldn’t, so if it’s come up and been answered can someone point me in the right direction?

I’ve successfully installed Ubuntu 18.10, everything worked, my RX 480 outputs video at 1920*1080 as well as audio. I can install and run steam, Lutrus, play on Linux; and of course play games, but when I install the graphics card drivers and restart the system won’t boot. I get what I affectionately call “the purple screen of death”.

I’ve updated to 19.04 and tried again, but met the same end… :unamused:

I know the simple answer is to not install the drivers but I doesn’t give me any over clocking options that I can find. Maybe that’s too ambitious…

Any help would be appreciated!

The mesa open source driver (AMDGPU) is the prefered driver for gaming and every day use. Only go for the proprietary driver if you really need it as it is less stable and sometimes can be even slower.

AMDGPU indeed supports overclocking:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AMDGPU#Overclocking

You will find many forum posts here of people doing just that:

There is also several utilities to help with overclocking:

https://launchpad.net/~trebelnik-stefina/+archive/ubuntu/radeon-profile

1 Like

Pretty sure AMD’s driver doesn’t officially support 1904?

As above, unless you need accelerated GPU compute, run the open driver only.

I’m waiting on ROCM support to be properly integrated into the open driver for that. Unfortunately they don’t support Fedora at all either.

1 Like

When on Linux, you do not need drivers for AMD hardware. those are in kernel already. You just installed pro drivers which are bad for gamers and everyday users. Only on Nvidia you need to install drivers and those are usually given from drivers utility on your distro. Just uninstall those pro drivers.

1 Like

Actually, on the latest kernel update to 18.04 LTS, I had to install the AMD drivers or my card kept on crashing. AMD xfx RX 470. Desktop would crash and so would the default amd driver from the kernel. I would have to drop to tty and restart x constantly. Since I installed the drivers, no more crashing. How do I report this?

Also, I rememer reading on this very forum that the 480’s seemed to have an issue with the open source driver

Don’t install drivers if you are using amd. A: you don’t have to, and B: its stupid. The only thing you need amdgpu-pro for is workstation cards. Amdgpuxis a perfectly good driver.

Trust me I tested it myself.

1 Like

In my case I had to. But most the time Aremis is right.

@FaunCB how do you explain my situation?

And how do I report my issue with in kernel driver?

Ur on 1804 and don’t have the latest kernel build so you appended the newer driver which is built around lts, rather than update to have the latest driver and powerplay optimizations.

If you want openCL acceleration for things like blender, you need amdgpu-pro at the moment.

edit:
whoops, necro-post…

I messed around tring to push kernels etc with the amdgpu-pro driver. I settled for 18.04 kernel 5.0.xx with lastest in that line. Everything works and that is what will remain until the open source is more reliable.

I have a duel boot drive for the lastest ubuntu and Ill check out fedora 31 soon. So for the PRO driver runs the all games for me and dual screens.

The kicker is audio on the TV I have connected has never worked with even the RX480 I ran for years and the pro driver picks it up and uses it fine. Not that I like the TV speakers but they come in handy from time to time.

EDIT: just caught the necro too. Still kernel 5.4 has a lots of AMDGPU fix’s still to come.

1 Like