[Solved] Mint 21 and RX 6650 XT Performance

[DPM]

Hi,

I noticed that with Mint 21 Cinnamon, the performance of my RX 6650 XT tanked e.g. in the Unigine benchmark, both in the live ISO and after a 20.3->21 upgrade via the mintupgrade tool. In Mint 20.3 also with kernel 5.15, I get 98 avg FPS in 1080p-high while that drops to 23 FPS in Mint 21. After getting the firmware directly from Git with...

Code: Select all

git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git
cd linux-firmware
sudo make install
sudo update-initramfs -c -k all

... and reboot, performance is back to normal. If I re-install the linux-firmware package via Synaptic, I'm back down to 23 FPS. So there is a problem with the provided firmware in the Ubuntu 22.04 repos. The problem may reappear again if the package is updated, except it it contains a fix for this problem.
linux-firmware package version with the problem: 20220329.git681281e4-0ubuntu3.3

System data:

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System:
  Kernel: 5.15.0-43-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.2.0
    Desktop: Cinnamon 5.4.9 tk: GTK 3.24.33 wm: Mutter vt: 7 dm: LightDM 1.30.0
    Distro: Linux Mint 21 Vanessa base: Ubuntu 22.04 jammy
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: ASUSTeK model: ROG STRIX B450-F GAMING v: Rev 1.xx
    serial: <superuser required> UEFI: American Megatrends v: 4801
    date: 03/02/2022
CPU:
  Info: 8-core model: AMD Ryzen 7 5700G with Radeon Graphics bits: 64
    type: MT MCP smt: enabled arch: Zen 3 rev: 0 cache: L1: 512 KiB L2: 4 MiB
    L3: 16 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 2392 high: 2689 min/max: 400/4673 boost: enabled cores:
    1: 2689 2: 2374 3: 2373 4: 2372 5: 2372 6: 2372 7: 2373 8: 2373 9: 2373
    10: 2371 11: 2375 12: 2373 13: 2374 14: 2374 15: 2374 16: 2373
    bogomips: 121595
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Navi 23 [Radeon RX 6650 XT] vendor: Sapphire driver: amdgpu
    v: kernel pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16 ports: active: DP-3
    empty: DP-1,DP-2,HDMI-A-1 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:73ef
    class-ID: 0300
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.3 driver: X: loaded: amdgpu
    gpu: amdgpu display-ID: :0 screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1200 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 508x317mm (20.0x12.5")
    s-diag: 599mm (23.6")
  Monitor-1: DisplayPort-2 mapped: DP-3 model: LG (GoldStar) 25BL56WY
    serial: <filter> res: 1920x1200 hz: 60 dpi: 90 size: 540x340mm (21.3x13.4")
    diag: 633mm (24.9") modes: max: 1920x1200 min: 640x480
  OpenGL:
    renderer: AMD DIMGREY_CAVEFISH (LLVM 13.0.1 DRM 3.42 5.15.0-43-generic)
    v: 4.6 Mesa 22.0.5 direct render: Yes
Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Navi 21 HDMI Audio [Radeon RX 6800/6800 XT / 6900 XT]
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16
    bus-ID: 03:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:ab28 class-ID: 0403
  Device-2: AMD Renoir Radeon High Definition Audio vendor: ASUSTeK
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16
    bus-ID: 0b:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:1637 class-ID: 0403
  Device-3: AMD Family 17h HD Audio vendor: ASUSTeK driver: snd_hda_intel
    v: kernel pcie: speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 0b:00.6 chip-ID: 1022:15e3
    class-ID: 0403
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.15.0-43-generic running: yes
  Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 15.99.1 running: yes
  Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.48 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Intel I211 Gigabit Network vendor: ASUSTeK driver: igb v: kernel
    pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 port: d000 bus-ID: 06:00.0
    chip-ID: 8086:1539 class-ID: 0200
  IF: enp6s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 1.82 TiB used: 445.66 GiB (23.9%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 860 EVO M.2 2TB size: 1.82 TiB
    speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 4B6Q scheme: GPT
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 93.31 GiB used: 25.49 GiB (27.3%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda3
  ID-2: /boot size: 1.37 GiB used: 249.9 MiB (17.8%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/sda2
  ID-3: /boot/efi size: 523 MiB used: 5.2 MiB (1.0%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/sda1
  ID-4: /home size: 1.7 TiB used: 419.93 GiB (24.2%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/sda4
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 2 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2
    file: /swapfile
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: N/A mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 40.0 C
    mem: 38.0 C
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A gpu: amdgpu fan: 0
Repos:
  Packages: apt: 3098
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list
    1: deb https://repo.vivaldi.com/archive/deb/ stable main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list
    1: deb https://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/linuxmint vanessa main upstream import backport
    2: deb http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/ubuntu jammy main restricted universe multiverse
    3: deb http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/ubuntu jammy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
    4: deb http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/ubuntu jammy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
    5: deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy-security main restricted universe multiverse
Info:
  Processes: 381 Uptime: 4m wakeups: 0 Memory: 30.73 GiB
  used: 2.13 GiB (6.9%) Init: systemd v: 249 runlevel: 5 Compilers:
  gcc: 11.2.0 alt: 11/9 clang: 14.0.0-1ubuntu1 Shell: Bash v: 5.1.16
  running-in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.3.13

[DPM]

Follow-up: I filed a bug report for Ubuntu, and they kindly followed through on that, so it's worth the effort. Today's update of the linux-firmware package 20220329.git681281e4-0ubuntu3.5 solves the problem for Ubuntu 22.04 and hence also for Mint 21.

This update is only for AMD's RX 6600 and 6650 series, not e.g. RX 6700 or higher. The latter would be different firmware that I cannot test. If you have comparable performance issues with these cards, and if you can solve that via the manual firmware update in the posting above, then please file a bug report on the Ubuntu bug tracker.