eGPU stuff

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raevol
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Re: eGPU stuff

Post by raevol »

lysol wrote: 02 May 2018, 19:24 Unless anyone of you guys have any idea what might be the problem.
Ubuntu studio? Ubuntu budgie? Have you tried just vanilla Ubuntu? It's going to have the most support.
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lysol
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Re: eGPU stuff

Post by lysol »

Well both of them are basically just ubuntu with other DE + some different shipped apps (they are "official" flavors). But sure, I bet regular Ubuntu would have managed an upgrade better. I've used vanilla Ubuntu pre-unity and during unity. Haven't tried it since the gnome 3 switch though.

The reason I went with Ubuntu Studio is just because I use this computer for music recording. Ubuntu Studio uses xfce though, which I don't like very much. I was happy therefore when I realized you could just apt-get the audio production meta package from ubuntu studio. Budgie seemed like a nice DE, so I wanted to try that one out.
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psi29a
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Re: eGPU stuff

Post by psi29a »

Have you tried any of the DRI_PRIME stuff yet? The idea is that you use the default (built-in) GPU for your graphics then only use your eGPU for games.
bcurtis@Wintermute:~$ xrandr --listproviders
Providers: number : 2
Provider 0: id: 0x70 cap: 0x9, Source Output, Sink Offload crtcs: 3 outputs: 4 associated providers: 1 name:modesetting
Provider 1: id: 0x49 cap: 0x6, Sink Output, Source Offload crtcs: 6 outputs: 4 associated providers: 1 name:AMD Radeon HD 8800M Series @ pci:0000:01:00.0
To use this you need to list what you have, you need at least 2 Providers. One is the Source output and the other is the Sink. In this case I run modesetting (via Intel GPU) then use the AMD for when I need to run Steam and other stuff using:
bcurtis@Wintermute:~$ DRI_PRIME=0 glxinfo | grep Device
Device: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Haswell Mobile (0x416)
bcurtis@Wintermute:~$ DRI_PRIME=1 glxinfo | grep Device
Device: AMD Radeon HD 8800M Series (CAPE VERDE / DRM 3.23.0 / 4.15.0-20-generic, LLVM 6.0.0) (0x6821)
Example:
DRI_PRIME=1 wine AliensColonialMarines.exe
You can prepend DRI_PRIME=1 in most shortcuts... like I did for steam, so that when steam runs the environmental variable is already set.

Good information here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PRIME

But basically, you need to use the modesetting drm driver for your Xorg or Wayland (default in Ubuntu now is Wayland, but it doesn't work with Synergy so I login with Xorg still).

Do not install bumblebee, fglrx, nvidia, nvidia-prime or any othat stuff. Just use the standard open-source stuff. amdgpu should be the way forward for you.
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lysol
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Re: eGPU stuff

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psi29a wrote: 03 May 2018, 09:27 Have you tried any of the DRI_PRIME stuff yet? The idea is that you use the default (built-in) GPU for your graphics then only use your eGPU for games.
Oh right, no, I haven't. I just wanted to get the thing to run every time I start my computer and not every 15 times. Because yesterday night, the GPU started up once when I booted. For some reason it only seems to work when I unplug the HDMI cable before booting. But I'll try it out! Thanks.
psi29a wrote: 03 May 2018, 09:27 But basically, you need to use the modesetting drm driver for your Xorg or Wayland (default in Ubuntu now is Wayland, but it doesn't work with Synergy so I login with Xorg still).
I think I read somewhere that 18.04 went back to xorg..?
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Re: eGPU stuff

Post by psi29a »

Yeah, that's what this guy says:
https://insights.ubuntu.com/2018/01/26/ ... by-default

However upon reboot, it went automatically to wayland (possibly because it was installed?), and I had to click on the gear icon next to my login to set it back to Gnome on Xorg. But that doesn't matter for you and your eGPU stuff. ;)
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AnyOldName3
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Re: eGPU stuff

Post by AnyOldName3 »

I have a suspicion that the best AMD drivers are Wayland-only, so if you're still having issues and Ubuntu switched back to Xorg, that might be something worth Googling.
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lysol
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Re: eGPU stuff

Post by lysol »

Thanks!
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psi29a
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Re: eGPU stuff

Post by psi29a »

AnyOldName3 wrote: 03 May 2018, 13:45 I have a suspicion that the best AMD drivers are Wayland-only, so if you're still having issues and Ubuntu switched back to Xorg, that might be something worth Googling.
Citation needed...

Anyway, I had more issues with Wayland than with Xorg with AMD. Xorg, shit just works. No Catalyst, no fglrx... just open-source AMDGPU packages.
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AnyOldName3
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Re: eGPU stuff

Post by AnyOldName3 »

It was months since I looked into it, so it could well be very not right.
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raevol
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Re: eGPU stuff

Post by raevol »

lysol wrote: 03 May 2018, 07:26 Well both of them are basically just ubuntu with other DE + some different shipped apps (they are "official" flavors). But sure, I bet regular Ubuntu would have managed an upgrade better. I've used vanilla Ubuntu pre-unity and during unity. Haven't tried it since the gnome 3 switch though.

The reason I went with Ubuntu Studio is just because I use this computer for music recording. Ubuntu Studio uses xfce though, which I don't like very much. I was happy therefore when I realized you could just apt-get the audio production meta package from ubuntu studio. Budgie seemed like a nice DE, so I wanted to try that one out.
My information could be outdated, but my understanding was that Ubuntu Studio rolled a new kernel, which is a prime culprit for driver issues. A lot of the Ubuntu knockoffs, like Mint and I am guessing Budgie, do weird stuff like that, so if you really want to test driver support you should try vanilla. Doesn't mean you have to stick with it, but you can at least isolate the problem.
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