6800xt and general performance issues

Ive been having the strangest issues ever since I upgraded to a 6800xt and I cant figure out why the hell it would act like this…

The clock normally wont go over 500mhz unless I force an overclock and when I do… the performance doesn’t even change! I get the same FPS no matter what and things can get rather choppy/inconsistent even when running games that aren’t graphics intensive and run natively like CS:GO

Im running on Manjaro with the latest zen kernel and I think everything driver-wise is fine and no matter what, running native, in proton, or in lutris, I seem to get fairly underwhelming performance.

inxi -Gazy
Graphics:
Device-1: AMD Navi 21 [Radeon RX 6800/6800 XT / 6900 XT] driver: amdgpu
v: kernel bus-ID: 04:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:73bf class-ID: 0300
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 compositor: xfwm4 v: 4.16.1 driver:
loaded: modesetting unloaded: vesa alternate: ati,fbdev display-ID: :0.0
screens: 1
Screen-1: 0 s-res: 2560x1440 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 677x381mm (26.7x15.0")
s-diag: 777mm (30.6")
Monitor-1: DP-1 res: 2560x1440 hz: 60 dpi: 109 size: 598x336mm (23.5x13.2")
diag: 686mm (27")
OpenGL: renderer: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT (SIENNA_CICHLID DRM 3.40.0
5.12.14-zen1-1-zen LLVM 12.0.1)
v: 4.6 Mesa 21.1.6 direct render: Yes

I suspect mayybeee my CPU (i7-3820) is limiting but even then, I got more stable performance in some games on a GTX970!

Anyone else run into something like this? I’ve been trawling through countless posts to no avail across the internet.

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You need to update your Mesa to the most recent 21.2 builds or use the 21.3-devel Mesa. Also, 5.14 kernel has better Navi2x performance.

I’ve had similar issues with my RX 6700 XT while running Control from Epic Games with Wine (new Linux user here, so this is not detailed and just a hunch).

My card’s clock remained at 500 MHz in default settings which led to 45 FPS (highest settings without raytracing, 1920x1080, 60 Hz display; DX 11 and DX 12 .exe made no real difference, although the DX 11 performance was a bit better). Forcing the card to max clock did only change the power consumption.

I tried the different Wine versions as the runner. 6.16, 6.17, lutris-fshack-6.14-3-x86_64 had the same lousy performance.

Using lutris-ge-lol-6.16-2-x86_64 did the trick. The card boosted to the highest clock in gamemode and I got 97 FPS at the same location ingame with the same settings (90 FPS with Wine 6.0.1).

The version of wine installed on the system also changed the amount of tearing artifacts with the same runner / wine version in Lutris.

Wine 5.0 from the Ubuntu app store produced big blocky artifacts when the camera angle changed (never seen something like that).
Wine 6.0.1 had visible regular tearing (I could have lived with that) and Wine 6.16 had as good as no tearing. 6.17 did not improve that.

I have a 6700xt and in Control, running 1440p I am getting close to 100 fps average with max settings with dx12 enabled. What kernel and mesa are you running? Are you running corectrl or radeon-profile to manage the OC? With the 6700xt in particular, performance improved a lot in the 5.13 kernel, though I have been noticing some small issues with 5.14 kernel lately. Also are you running a tkg, xanmod or zen custom kernel? Do you have esync and fsync enabled with these kernels?

Hi jhu,

thanks for the input!

100 fps in 1440p is impressive. I only got 110 in full hd in windows.

Kernel: 5.11.0-34-generic x86_64 (the current one on Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS)
v: 4.6 Mesa 21.2.0-devel
I haven’t overclocked the card, running on stock settings in the devil’s silent mode (-8% power consumption -0% performance vs. reference). I monitored the core clock in GOverlay.

My best guess is that my performance will increase when the Ubuntu LTS kernel gets from 5.11 to 5.13.
esync is on, fsync not, because of the standard kernel.

Here are some links:

tkg kernel : recommend adding a custom kernel - use the most recent 5.13 or 5.14 as they have the best support for the 6700xt (I have the hellhound, so optimising the whole setup is key)
Corectrl : For the 6700xt, AMD pumps too much voltage into it, I run 213w, 2800MHz clocks with a -90 mV offset and a custom fan curve through Corectrl. You will need to vary these for your card to see what is stable (I tested using TimeSpy in Windows to tune the lowest power, highest performance combo - got top for 6700xt/11600K combo). You can also use a straight voltage offset to reduce the thermals even further with the stock settings, can make a big difference.
Waiting for the lts kernel to update is also an option but if you don’t absolutely need that kernel, the amdgpu driver updates in 5.13 alone make the switch worthwhile. Same with Mesa - if you can use timeshift for regular backups before updates, switching to Mesa-21.3-devel (oibaf ppa) is recommended (but make sure you have timeshift reference points to fallback to). Also the version VKD3D you use will make a huge difference with dx12 games in Linux. The addition of dxr (not fully supported for AMD cards in Mesa yet) and resizable bar (direct vram writes) can add 5-6% performance boosts along with checking out the Phoronix reviews on AMDVLK vs Mesa (he lists the key settings such as nggc that can give performance boosts).

Thanks for the links and information.

Resizable bar will not work though with an i7 6700k :wink:

Ahhh yeah that could be a problem - also explains why fps is lower - I upgraded from a i5-7500 to an i5-11600K with a solid OC night and day performance difference… anyway, check out xanmod kernels - they might be compatible with your Ubuntu. Phoronix has a good review of Linux game performance with the different kernels that you can check out also…

Definite performance increase after these updates, 21.2 along with a 5.13-zen kernel im seeing a solid ~150 FPS in Far Cry 5 and the clock speed goes above 500MHZ, finally changing the clock speed seems to do something more than just increase the power usage…

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For any curious people, this is a straight 100% increase in performance not to mention the stability!