# AMDGPU



## tanscoobydoo03 (Mar 15, 2019)

So I was wanting to install FreeBSD and I needed a desktop environment. So after tons of trying over and over again to get get xorg to work, I couldn't,  usually resulting in "cannot run in framebuffer mode" or "no screens found." So I began to wonder, does the amdgpu driver in ports actually support my AMD Radeon RX 590? (which is Polaris 30 XT I think)


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## SirDice (Mar 15, 2019)

Have a look here: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics#AMD_Graphics


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## D-FENS (Mar 15, 2019)

I posted a tutorial for RX 580. Give it a try and see if it works: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/rx-580-supported.65905/#post-396194


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## D-FENS (Mar 17, 2019)

Oh, and by the way. I don't thing polaris 3.0 support is available. Even 2.0 seems to be not yet implemented. My card uses the 1.0 firmware and I know someone who uses 1.2.


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## tanscoobydoo03 (Mar 17, 2019)

roccobaroccoSC said:


> Oh, and by the way. I don't thing polaris 3.0 support is available. Even 2.0 seems to be not yet implemented. My card uses the 1.0 firmware and I know someone who uses 1.2.


Yeah I remembered seeing something on the AMDGPU on the ports page saying it supports only Polaris 10 & 11 but I wanted to make sure it was correct. Thank you for the response!


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## Maddog (Mar 18, 2019)

I finally got kde5 Plasma to work on FreeBSD 12 (just today), solving errors like yours, I don't know if it was the right way or not but I installed: 
 usr/ports/x11-drivers/xf86-video-amdgpu
After reboot it started but was bad, everything bounced all around until I changed, kde start button- computer system settings - display and monitor - compositor - rendering background - (from open 2.1 to 3.1) - another reboot and things seem are shaping up nicely.


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## D-FENS (Mar 19, 2019)

Maddog said:


> I finally got kde5 Plasma to work on FreeBSD 12 (just today), solving errors like yours, I don't know if it was the right way or not but I installed:
> usr/ports/x11-drivers/xf86-video-amdgpu
> After reboot it started but was bad, everything bounced all around until I changed, kde start button- computer system settings - display and monitor - compositor - rendering background - (from open 2.1 to 3.1) - another reboot and things seem are shaping up nicely.


Very good advice! I also changed it to 3.1 and now graphics seem quite smooth. My card is AMD Radeon RX 580.


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## tanscoobydoo03 (Mar 22, 2019)

Maddog said:


> After reboot it started


So xorg started up?, xorg won't start at all on my pc, even when using the preinstalled desktop environment xorg comes with. Also if you don't mind me asking, what GPU are you using?

The irony here is I bought an AMD GPU to have better support for Linux/FreeBSD (because the AMD drivers are open-source) but what I got was the complete opposite. Roughly 40% of Linux distros are completely incompatible with my RX 590 (Ubuntu and all Ubuntu-based distros included), which is already a bad enough of a sign.


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## D-FENS (Mar 22, 2019)

tanscoobydoo03 said:


> So xorg started up?, xorg won't start at all on my pc, even when using the preinstalled desktop environment xorg comes with. Also if you don't mind me asking, what GPU are you using?
> 
> The irony here is I bought an AMD GPU to have better support for Linux/FreeBSD (because the AMD drivers are open-source) but what I got was the complete opposite. Roughly 40% of Linux distros are completely incompatible with my RX 590 (Ubuntu and all Ubuntu-based distros included), which is already a bad enough of a sign.


Why is RX 590 so much different from RX 580? Any ideas?
I use RX 580 and it works beautifully with FreeBSD and GNU/Linux.

So you tried the tutorial from the link above and it did not work? What step did it fail at?


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## tanscoobydoo03 (Mar 22, 2019)

roccobaroccoSC said:


> Why is RX 590 so much different from RX 580? Any ideas?
> I use RX 580 and it works beautifully with FreeBSD and GNU/Linux.
> 
> So you tried the tutorial from the link above and it did not work? What step did it fail at?


I haven't tried it (yet maybe). All I can confirm is xorg spits out errors when running the command "startx" as either root or user. The only time I got something different is when FreeBSD started up and gave me a bunch of flashing colours. After initially installing xorg, running startx only spat out "cannot start in framebuffer mode" (or it might have been "no framebuffer devices found" either one) I have tried generating a new xorg.conf which didn't work, only outputting "no screens found" even though I can confirm a screen was defined in xorg.conf. If it helps the xorg.conf.d directory is empty. I had the same problem a while back with my old NVidia GTX 1060 6GB, the /usr/ports driver didn't work but the driver from the NVidia website worked perfectly.

The main differences between the 590 and 580 is the 590 uses the new Polaris 30 XT which is based on the (relatively) new 12nm FinFET technology along with other features such as an increased core frequency. The vBIOS is what makes the 590 so different from a 580. The 580 uses Polaris 20 XT which is based on the older 14nm FinFET technology. Basically, the 590 is a refined and modernized 580 with more horsepower. The 580 and 590 are very similar, which is why the 590 is sometimes not considered as a "new GPU release."

Another thing to keep in mind is that I saw the vBIOS is what was causing issues on Linux. Basically the driver has no idea how to use the 590 or the driver will get confused thinking the 590 is a 580.

Here are some links you should check out:








						Radeon 500 series - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				





			UserBenchmark: AMD RX 580 vs 590
		

Also, I forgot to link my GPU, it's here:


			https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX74747


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## D-FENS (Mar 23, 2019)

I had similar problems when trying to set up RX 580. It was quite tricky. There is a good chance what we researched an year ago could work for you too.


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## samob (Aug 29, 2021)

I have followed some instructions on FreeBSD 13 and AMD Ryzen5 with Vega5 laptop, and one step not mentioned (and not obvious to noobs like me) is to add  `hw.syscons.disable=1` to your `/boot/loader.conf`


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## Argentum (Aug 29, 2021)

samob said:


> I have followed some instructions on FreeBSD 13 and AMD Ryzen5 with Vega5 laptop, and one step not mentioned (and not obvious to noobs like me) is to add  `hw.syscons.disable=1` to your `/boot/loader.conf`


This is not needed with new 13.0 loader any more. I have two desktop systems with RX 570 and RX 550. After upgrade to FreeBSD 13.0 I could remove _hw.syscons.disable=1_ from /boot/loader.conf. This is not needed any more, but remember to upgrade the UEFI loader too. System upgrade does not update the loader automatically. New loader works with 12.x also.


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