Bug 8891

Summary:	ATI vga card consumes very much power with the open source drivers
Product:	Mageia	Reporter:	Mustafa Muhammad <mustafa1024m>
Component:	Release (media or process)	Assignee:	Mageia Bug Squad <bugsquad>
Status:	RESOLVED OLD	QA Contact:
Severity:	major
Priority:	Normal	CC:	julien.moragny, marja11, reinout, sysadmin-bugs
Version:	Cauldron	Keywords:	NEEDINFO
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Source RPM:		CVE:
Status comment:

Description Mustafa Muhammad 2013-01-29 22:45:32 CET

Description of problem:
I have a Dell Inspiron 1564 laptop with ATI 4330 VGA card, the VGA card (with free drivers) consumes more power than double the normal amount before (using proprietry drivers), now the laptop battery lasts for about 80 minutes instead of 160 minutes, this is a disaster in a laptop, and this affects anybody with AMD card older than 5xxx series (this is from 2010).

The last proprietry driver that supports AMD cards older than 5xxx series supports xorg-server 1.12 but not 1.13 which is now in Mageia 3 beta 2, if anybody can make the installer install either (xorg-server 1.12 + old propriety driver) or (xorg-server 1.13 + new propriety driver) based on the card version will save lots of lives (battery lives!!) and will be very much appreciated from all AMD card owners.
One of the greatest things about Mageia is being pragmatic (installing necessary drivers and codecs by default)

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
xorg-server 1.12 and 1.13
AMD cards prior to 5xxx

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install Mageia 3 beta2 on a laptop with AMD card prior to 5xxx
2.
3.

Comment 1 Julien Moragny 2013-01-30 20:39:38 CET

Hi,
Have you tried to set the power management features of the driver ?
http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature#KMS_Power_Management_Options

IIRC, by default, the driver set the clocks & voltage to max performance and not to powersave.

CC: (none) => julien.moragny

Comment 2 Reinout van Schouwen 2013-01-31 01:06:41 CET

I think I suffer from the same problem as the bug reporter. My laptop (ATI HD3470) is running very hot compared to the previous version. However, even as super user I cannot set the power method as described in your link:

sudo echo "dynpm" > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method 
bash: /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method: Access denied

What else is there to try?

CC: (none) => reinout

Comment 3 Mustafa Muhammad 2013-01-31 15:44:46 CET

(In reply to comment #1)
> Hi,
> Have you tried to set the power management features of the driver ?
> http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature#KMS_Power_Management_Options
Now I tried, but the goes away when I reboot the laptop, how to make permanent change to /sys ?


(In reply to comment #2)
> I think I suffer from the same problem as the bug reporter. My laptop (ATI
> HD3470) is running very hot compared to the previous version. However, even as
> super user I cannot set the power method as described in your link:
> 
> sudo echo "dynpm" > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method 
I don't know what is the problem in your command, but sudo may be not installed or not configured correctly, use su, then:
#echo "dynpm" > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method

this should work (but only until you reboot).

Comment 4 Julien Moragny 2013-01-31 20:40:08 CET

(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #1)
> > Hi,
> > Have you tried to set the power management features of the driver ?
> > http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature#KMS_Power_Management_Options
> Now I tried, but the goes away when I reboot the laptop, how to make permanent
> change to /sys ?
> 

I put the command in /etc/rc.local which at the end of the boot.

There is probably a sysctk knob somewhere (to be put in sysctl.conf) but I didn't find it.

Comment 5 Samuel Verschelde 2015-05-03 16:03:56 CEST

Is the problem still present in Mageia 5RC?

Keywords: (none) => NEEDINFO

Comment 6 Reinout van Schouwen 2015-05-04 12:05:18 CEST

(In reply to Samuel VERSCHELDE from comment #5)
> Is the problem still present in Mageia 5RC?

I don't have this laptop any more, sorry.

Comment 7 Marja Van Waes 2015-09-22 20:48:36 CEST

(In reply to Reinout van Schouwen from comment #6)
> (In reply to Samuel VERSCHELDE from comment #5)
> > Is the problem still present in Mageia 5RC?
> 
> I don't have this laptop any more, sorry.

And no one else replied, so closing as OLD

@ anybody still having this issue in Mga5 or caildron: please reopen this report, give details and remove NEEDINFO from the whiteboard

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
CC: (none) => marja11
Resolution: (none) => OLD