Drivers & Software

[MonkeyCpp]

I have two all-AMD systems: a 5950X with an RX 6600 card and a 7950X with an RX 6800 card. I've never been able to get Linux drivers fully operational: I've tried on Debian 11, Kubuntu (22.04 and 22.10) and Fedora 37.

The cards work out of the box, but I can't get access to OpenCL in Blender e.g. I've gone through the amdgpu-install instruction from AMD.com to no avail; I haven't found any instructions for getting AMD drivers other than those that come with Fedora - Mesa and the firmware drivers - working on Fedora.

I have managed to get Nvidia cards working with Fedora and Kubuntu, meaning I can access CUDA in Blender, e.g.

What do I need to do to get a fully operational Radeon 6000-series GPU working in a Linux distro? My preferred distro has been Debian, but I've recently moved to Fedora because of graphics card issues, and also Kubuntu for the same reason: I can get those distros working with Nvidia cards, but not AMD/Radeon cards.

How can I end my frustration and get a fully operational 6600 or 6800 card on Linux? Windows works with whatever card I throw in the machine, but that's not the solution I want. I've addressed this issue on various fora without success.

Thanks for any help.

[elstaci]

Are you using Blender directly or through AMD ProRender plug?

If using a ProRender plug then try posting here: https://community.amd.com/t5/blender-discussions/bd-p/blender-discussions

Also try to download the latest Linux driver from AMD Download page. But it seems to be unavailable at the moment.

[MonkeyCpp]

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Are you using Blender directly or through AMD ProRender plug?

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Direct. I have the latest drivers (amdgpu-install) prior to the latest 23.x drivers which were Windows-only when I checked about 12 hours ago.

[MonkeyCpp]

Linux drivers are still 22.4 which are the ones I installed.

[elstaci]

 Okay found out that Blender dropped OpenCL in 2022 according to this Stack Exchange Thread on Blender: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/261498/opencl-gpu-rendering-option-not-visible-after-ins...

From Wiki Blender.org: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0/Cycles

AMD

For AMD GPUs, there is a new backend based on the HIP platform. In Blender 3.0, this is supported on Windows with RDNA and RDNA2 generation discrete graphics cards. It includes Radeon RX 5000 and RX 6000 series, and Radeon Pro W6000 series GPUs. Driver Radeon Pro 21.Q4 or Adrenalin 21.12.1 (or newer) is required.

We are working with AMD to add support for Linux and investigate earlier generation graphics cards, for the Blender 3.1 release.

Note that in the AMD driver, HIP is only officially supported for RDNA2 graphics cards. However we have found that RDNA also works in practice.

OpenCL

OpenCL rendering support was removed. The combination of the limited Cycles kernel implementation, driver bugs, and stalled OpenCL standard has made maintenance too difficult.

We are working with hardware vendors to bring back GPU rendering support using other APIs.

[MonkeyCpp]

I did some more testing. You may be right that the issue is mainly with Blender; I have some other/versioning issues too.

On my 5950X system with the RX 6600 card both Debian 11 and Kubuntu 22.04.1 work correctly and radeontop shows that the GPU is active.

On my 7950X system with the RX 6800 card, Fedora 37 and Kubuntu 22.10 aren't working correctly although this could be down to an unrecognized driver. amdgpu-install won't install drivers successfully on Kubuntu 22.10: there are unresolved dependencies and APT thinks there's an impossible situation that has occurred. Fedora 37 comes with AMD drivers which I presume means the Mesa driver. radeontop cannot identify the 6800 on either of those installations and shows no GPU activity when I'm running glmark2 for instance. Debian 11 on that machine works fine with the 6800: I had to clone glmark2 and build it but it works (except it got a recursive gnu_cxx_initialization exception but I ran it in gdb and it ran fine: probably an init race condition).

[MonkeyCpp]

Thanks for the response. However, the problem isn't Blender: that was just an example. If I run glmark2 all the rendering happens on a CPU core (yes the CPU has an iGPU too but the video is output from the Radeon card), there is no activity on the GPU per radeontop. I've tried DaVinci Resolve and other graphical programs. Also, this feature works fine on the same version of Blender with the same graphics card on Windows 11. No graphical processing that I expect to happen on the GPU is being run there on on a Radeon card on Linux.

At least I can get Nvidia cards to do graphical processing on Linux.

[petergroft29]

Connect to your Linux instance. Install gcc and make, if they are not already installed.
Update your package cache and get the package updates for your instance.
Reboot the instance.
Reconnect to the instance after it reboots.
Download the latest AMD driver.
Extract the file.
Change to the folder for the extracted driver.
Add the missing modules for the driver installation.
Run the self-install script to install the full graphics stack.
Reboot the instance.
Confirm that the driver is functional.

Greetings,
Peter

[MonkeyCpp]

Thanks Peter, although the instructions are a little vague: "the latest AMD driver"? I presume you mean the latest driver package available from AMD.com? That's the 22.40 build for Linux, and it's only really aimed at a few specific distros and versions, like Ubuntu 22.04; I've attempted to it install it via amdgpu-install on Kubuntu 22.04 (successfully) and 22.10 (failed), and there are no instructions for Fedora; there are for RHEL but I'm not running that. Same with OpenSUSE.

However, since you mention gcc and make, maybe you mean download the AMD driver source? I'm not sure where that is: I know that Mesa is open source but I presume the AMD drivers available from AMD.com are proprietary?

Add the missing modules for the driver installation? That seems a bit open-ended?

Anyway, it looks like I have at least a couple of options: Kubuntu 22.04 or Debian 11 seem to be working with the amdgpu-install drivers although Blender is not. Fedora 37 works with an Nvidia card and Blender does work with that installation and finds a CUDA-capable GPU. And Windows works with all GPUs and finds OpenCL- and CUDA-capable GPUs in Blender 3.4.

[MonkeyCpp]

So my problem apparently is that I can't get OpenCL working properly. Mostly I've used Blender to test this functionality. Blender 3.4 doesn't work with my 6800 card on neither Fedora 37 nor Debian 11 nor Kubuntu 22.10 (that's down to driver issues as described above). Blender 3.4 does work on Windows with the 6800 and recognizes it as a GPU that supports OpenCL.

My 5950X build with the RX 6600 has an installation of Blender 2.85 from the Debian 11 repository, so before Blender stopped supporting OpenCL, and that doesn't find an OpenCL-capable GPU either. Again, Windows 11 is fine although that's using the 3.4 version of Blender.

I've been looking for some software that sanity checks and maybe stress tests OpenCL on the GPU. I've found the AMD Radeon verifier software but haven't yet successfully used it.

[elstaci]

Try posting this thread at AMD Forum's Developers. There they have a Forum for OpenCL (https://community.amd.com/t5/opencl/bd-p/opencl-discussions) but you first must post here to get access: https://community.amd.com/t5/newcomers-start-here/bd-p/newcomer-forum

Maybe some one there can help you with OpenCL and Blender.

[MonkeyCpp]

Thanks. I'll give that a try.

[MonkeyCpp]

I've decided I need some more pertinent information before I try to get it escalated to development. It seems that they have their hands full with 7000-series GPU drivers. The drivers are mostly working on my installations, I need more proof either way that OpenCL is working or not. So far I've been using Blender as a litmus test, but I really need something more fine-grained and definitive. I've been looking around for OpenCL software other than a few apps like Blender, Gimp, DaVinci Resolve, Kdenlive, and so on. I'd really like a test suite that I can run that would tell me whether all the GPU features are operating correctly or not. Meanwhile, for everyday use, the GPUs and drivers are absolutely fine. This OpenCL issue will continue to bug me until I can get better confirmation one way or the other.

[elstaci]

AMD Developer's Forum is just like any other forum where Users and Moderators are involved. So just open thread first at the link I posted to get started.

If you run GPU-Z that will at least indicate whether OpenCL is enabled by the AMD Driver.

At the very bottom of GPU-Z it will show all the APIs that are enabled with a check mark.

[MonkeyCpp]

Thanks again. Alas, CPU-Z is Windows-only. (This is why I always have to start a new build off with Windows - most of the sanity checking and stress testing software runs under Windows)

[elstaci]

Googled to see if GPU-Z was compatible but it isn't but it mentions this Linus App that is very similar CPU-X (by X0rg)