Quoting: Shmerl5.3 was bad, 5.4 was semi-usable, 5.5 was mostly OK. 5.6 is stable. So I've seen quite gradual progression here. Rolling distro nails this.

Nope.

5.3 - ok
5.4 - unusable
5.5 - ok
5.6 - we will see

Quoting: Tuxee

Quoting: Shmerl5.3 was bad, 5.4 was semi-usable, 5.5 was mostly OK. 5.6 is stable. So I've seen quite gradual progression here. Rolling distro nails this.

Nope.

5.3 - ok
5.4 - unusable
5.5 - ok
5.6 - we will see

Not in my experience. You clearly didn't upgrade things properly, likely using outdated firmware like TobyGornow suggested above. You don't need to copy it from "who knows where". Use the upstream link above, and keep it always up to date.

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: Tuxee

Quoting: Shmerl5.3 was bad, 5.4 was semi-usable, 5.5 was mostly OK. 5.6 is stable. So I've seen quite gradual progression here. Rolling distro nails this.

Nope.

5.3 - ok
5.4 - unusable
5.5 - ok
5.6 - we will see

Not in my experience. You clearly didn't upgrade things properly, likely using outdated firmware like TobyGornow suggested above. You don't need to copy it from "who knows where". Use the upstream link above, and keep it always up to date.

Look: I didn't upgrade anything. 5.4 is unusable both on an Ubuntu 19.10 and an Ubuntu 20.04 - both are/were OOTB installations. I assume the firmware on 20.04 is ok, because 5.5+ seems to work. Was that clear enough? And the "copied from who knows where" firmware works perfectly ok with my kernel 5.3 which you stated was bad. Which isn't backed by Toby, too.

Quoting: TobyGornowEdit : https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/log/?qt=grep&q=navi10

Thanks for that.

Quoting: TuxeeLook: I didn't upgrade anything. 5.4 is unusable both on an Ubuntu 19.10 and an Ubuntu 20.04 - both are/were OOTB installations. I assume the firmware on 20.04 is ok, because 5.5+ seems to work. Was that clear enough? And the "copied from who knows where" firmware works perfectly ok with my kernel 5.3 which you stated was bad. Which isn't backed by Toby, too.

Timing matters. Kernels don't remain frozen in time. I.e. initial fixes appear in recent kernels, later some of them are backported to older ones (not all). So it's not impossible to first use 5.4.1 or something and have bad experience, and then use 5.3.9 or some such, and have a better one. If you update with delay (which is common for non rolling distros), such stuff can happen.

Last edited by Shmerl on 17 February 2020 at 10:50 am UTC

Sigh. Yes, kernels are clearly not frozen in time. My test install of Ubuntu 20.04 with kernel 5.5 was fine until 5.5.9. Since 5.5.10 I get these

[powerplay] failed send message: NumOfDisplays (64)  param: 0x00000002 response 0xffffffc2

several time. While not crashing your machine this will slow down the boot process horribly since between each try there is a 3 seconds delay. Plus - as stated numerous times before - it leaves me wondering which kernel version will (re-)introduce another breakage.

Or is it the BIOS (Mesa didn't receive an update in the meantime)? According to the changelog

linux-firmware (1.187) focal;
...
 * Rebase against git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git
    8eb0b281511d6455ca9151e52f694dc982193251 (LP: #1865130)
...
- amdgpu: update vega10 firmware from 19.50
...
- Seth Forshee <[email protected]>  Thu, 19 Mar 2020 11:37:49 -0500

Obviously not. The MD5s of the Navi10-files extracted from
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/log/?qt=grep&q=navi10
are exactly the ones currently installed via the official Ubuntu repo.

Well, it was nice as long as it lasted. Meanwhile kernel 5.3 on my 18.04 has to soldier on.

Quoting: TuxeeWell, it was nice as long as it lasted. Meanwhile kernel 5.3 on my 18.04 has to soldier on.

Just FYI, Ubuntu's mainline 5.5.9 and 5.5.10 are fine for me on Mint 19.3 (based on Ubuntu 18.04).

Indeed 5.5.9 was fine, 5.5.10 was not (both from the mainline repo). I'll reinstall 5.5.9 and see whether the problem persists.

Aaaand it's the BIOS.
Replacing the most recent BIOS files (2020-02-04) with some "different ones", namely the ones I have on my 18.04 setup results in smooth and speedy booting and not a single amdgpu error, frame rates in my ROTR benchmark are ok. Even the lone
amdgpu: [powerplay] failed send message: SetHardMinByFreq (28)  is gone. I suppose I now have to backtrack which firmware version is the one I am now using. (Which reiterates what I tried to express with this whole thread.)

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: TuxeeWell, it was nice as long as it lasted. Meanwhile kernel 5.3 on my 18.04 has to soldier on.

Just FYI, Ubuntu's mainline 5.5.9 and 5.5.10 are fine for me on Mint 19.3 (based on Ubuntu 18.04).

What BIOS files are you using? Where did you get them from?