RX 590 Linux issue {Solved: Post 2}

Hardware GPU
1

I have been trying to get my XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy card to work on my Linux desktop. It handles showing the boot screen and BIOS screen just fine, but when I boot into Linux, the GPU fan switches to max speed for a couple of seconds, and then the card stops giving any output causing the monitor to go into sleep.

The issue appears to be the same as the one described in this article: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Radeon-RX-590-Latest-Progress

I have the latest BIOS update from AMD, and have tried booting into the following USB install mediums:
Arch 2018.12.01
Manjaro 18.0.1
Ubuntu 18.10
Kubuntu 18.10

Even the Arch installer had the same problem, so I am not even able to install anything. Although, it might be possible to do something along the lines of switching to an old Nvidia GPU that I have, then use the Arch installer to install Arch and the AMD drivers, then swap back to the RX590 and reboot. But I was hoping someone had some other good ideas I could try first.

Any suggestions to what I could try?

My system:
Motherboard: Prime X370-PRO
CPU: Ryzen 5 1600

2

Attempt to use the boot flag amdgpu.dpm=0

This will absolutely cripple the performance of the card but its the only way to boot right now. You are essentially disabling DPM which also severely hurts performance… The dynamic power management is for switching between power states based upon GPU activity. So you are bound to crippling slow clock speeds and the manual power profile adjustments are not available to make manual power management changes. I wish there was a work around but for now its all fucked. Its just like with Nouveau. They are in pretty rough shape too.

If you are trying to use the card at its full performance just forget about it. Unless @wendell has any insight. He is usually pretty up to date on the latest fixes for things. I am not running any AMD graphics hardware anymore so I face more of the nouveau and nvidia side of linux GPU issues

3

I see. I was worried something like this might be the case.
In that case, I will switch back to my Nvidia card for my Linux desktop, and then use the RX590 for hardware pass-through to my Win10 VM. I had originally intended to pass through the Nvidia card, but sometimes you just have to go with the pragmatic solution.
Thank you for the added insight Heimdallr.

1 Like
4

Just an update.
My first pass-through attempt wasn’t successful. After adding the RX 590’s device ID to vfio.conf, (so that the VFIO driver could grab it) I still got the same issue.

However, it is worth noting that after packing down the card and readying it for the RMA process, I discovered that updating the BIOS had disabled virtualisation. I don’t know if this could prevent the VFIO driver from grabbing the card, but if so, then hardware pass-through might still be doable.

5

My card came in yesterday I’ll be playing with vfio passthrough for it most of today.

6

So it’s working properly in a pass-through setup? Cool. What is your host OS? Did you have to do anything out of the ordinary to get it to work compared to other cards?

7

I didn’t say it was working I said I’d be playing with it lol
Work took up most of my time today so didnt get around to it

8

I thought you meant playing a video game with it using pass-through.
Have fun and please let us know how it goes.