6 ms·

I don't trust AMDs drivers after my experience with a RX 6600 XT (which I chose, in part, because of it's open source drivers) on Ubuntu. I experience the follo

I don't trust AMDs drivers after my experience with a RX 6600 XT (which I chose, in part, because of it's open source drivers) on Ubuntu. I experience the following: * system crashes if I turn on my monitors at the wrong time when waking from sleep. One trigger seems to be a monitor powering on while I'm logging in. Both screens go black and I'm forced to do a hard reboot. * flickering and parts of the screen going black, which seems to be related to video playback but occurs at other time (for example, while typing this comment) I didn't have either problem with the NVIDIA card that I used previously.

throw_me_5555 4y ago
It is irrational, and I know it, but I had so many issues with drivers for Radeon 9550, almost 20 years ago that I am still afraid to buy another AMD card.
- snvzz 4y ago
  >almost 20 years ago Yeah, that was ATI, pre-AMD.
shocks 4y ago
> on Ubuntu This might be your problem - the kernel that ships with Ubuntu is often very old. My 5700XT ran like crap under Ubuntu - switching to a distro[0] with the latest kernel fixed all my problems. You can't be mad at AMD because Canonical ship an old kernel! [0] Any distro with a recent kernel will do. I picked Gentoo, but that's irrelevant.
- scns 4y ago
  No need to switch, since you can use a kernel by https://xanmod.org https://xanmod.org
  - snvzz 4y ago
    Running a somewhat current Mesa3d should also matter. Ubuntu's stack is just prehistoric.
    - noelwelsh 4y ago
      I'll try updating that as well as my kernel. Thanks for the suggestion.
      - scns 4y ago
        For Mesa you can use this PPA https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+ppa-packages https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+ppa-packages
        noelwelsh 4y ago
        Thanks! I've switched to that and my flickering is greatly reduced!
- noelwelsh 4y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion. I'm on 5.19, which is fairly recent, but I'll try upgrading to 6 to see what happens. If you never hear from me again, know that I don't regret bricking my machine and I'm sure 2023 will be the year of Linux on the desktop.
  - dhruvdh 4y ago
    Do consider switching to Pop_OS, they're Ubuntu with much better UX and get kernel updates faster.
  - shocks 4y ago
    Good luck. :)
    - noelwelsh 4y ago
      Upgraded the kernel and Mesa3d and flickering is greatly reduced! Thanks again!
Lev1a 4y ago
For the system crashing issue, do you happen to have the different monitors connected via different connector/protocol types, like one HDMI and one DP? I had a similar issue with my previous GPU, an RX560, where my system would sometimes freeze either while turning the monitors on or other times when it was locked with both monitors off. On the 560 I had no choice but to connect 1x DP + 1x HDMI but on my newer 6700xt I connected both monitors via DP and the whole class of issues just went away.
- noelwelsh 4y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion. I found others mentioning this issue so I switched to both on DP and unfortunately the problem continues.
tracker1 4y ago
You can use ukuu to get a newer kernel, which will help. I had a similar experience with 5700XT at launch, and it really didn't clear up until the next major release and I had issues with a few things running a more bleeding edge kernel. Unfortunately, a lot of things don't get shaken out before release because of limited access to hardware. Within around 6 months things are generally a lot better. I wound up switching to a 3080 as I wanted to play with RTX and CUDA, thinking of jumping to an RX 7900 XTX in March/April if prices are still competitive. It won't be as good as 4080 for RTX, but similar to 3080 performance, which for me has been usable.

throw_me_5555 4y ago

It is irrational, and I know it, but I had so many issues with drivers for Radeon 9550, almost 20 years ago that I am still afraid to buy another AMD card.

snvzz 4y ago
>almost 20 years ago Yeah, that was ATI, pre-AMD.

shocks 4y ago

> on Ubuntu This might be your problem - the kernel that ships with Ubuntu is often very old. My 5700XT ran like crap under Ubuntu - switching to a distro[0] with the latest kernel fixed all my problems. You can't be mad at AMD because Canonical ship an old kernel! [0] Any distro with a recent kernel will do. I picked Gentoo, but that's irrelevant.

scns 4y ago
No need to switch, since you can use a kernel by https://xanmod.org https://xanmod.org
- snvzz 4y ago
  Running a somewhat current Mesa3d should also matter. Ubuntu's stack is just prehistoric.
  - noelwelsh 4y ago
    I'll try updating that as well as my kernel. Thanks for the suggestion.
    - scns 4y ago
      For Mesa you can use this PPA https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+ppa-packages https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+ppa-packages
      - noelwelsh 4y ago
        Thanks! I've switched to that and my flickering is greatly reduced!
noelwelsh 4y ago
Thanks for the suggestion. I'm on 5.19, which is fairly recent, but I'll try upgrading to 6 to see what happens. If you never hear from me again, know that I don't regret bricking my machine and I'm sure 2023 will be the year of Linux on the desktop.
- dhruvdh 4y ago
  Do consider switching to Pop_OS, they're Ubuntu with much better UX and get kernel updates faster.
- shocks 4y ago
  Good luck. :)
  - noelwelsh 4y ago
    Upgraded the kernel and Mesa3d and flickering is greatly reduced! Thanks again!

Lev1a 4y ago

For the system crashing issue, do you happen to have the different monitors connected via different connector/protocol types, like one HDMI and one DP? I had a similar issue with my previous GPU, an RX560, where my system would sometimes freeze either while turning the monitors on or other times when it was locked with both monitors off. On the 560 I had no choice but to connect 1x DP + 1x HDMI but on my newer 6700xt I connected both monitors via DP and the whole class of issues just went away.

noelwelsh 4y ago
Thanks for the suggestion. I found others mentioning this issue so I switched to both on DP and unfortunately the problem continues.

tracker1 4y ago

You can use ukuu to get a newer kernel, which will help. I had a similar experience with 5700XT at launch, and it really didn't clear up until the next major release and I had issues with a few things running a more bleeding edge kernel. Unfortunately, a lot of things don't get shaken out before release because of limited access to hardware. Within around 6 months things are generally a lot better. I wound up switching to a 3080 as I wanted to play with RTX and CUDA, thinking of jumping to an RX 7900 XTX in March/April if prices are still competitive. It won't be as good as 4080 for RTX, but similar to 3080 performance, which for me has been usable.