loading drm crashes system

[Scott Bennett]

Greg V <greg at unrelenting.technology> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 18:27, Scott Bennett via freebsd-x11 
> <freebsd-x11 at freebsd.org> wrote:
> > 	d) which Radeon cards are no longer supported and which are still
> > 	   supported?
> > 
> >      That last one is important to those of us despairing of ever 
> > having working,
> > safe-to-use graphics support again in FreeBSD on their systems.  If 
> > what was
> > working before has been broken without warning (or, apparently, 
> > concern on the
> > part of the graphics team) and is likely never to work again in the 
> > future, then
> > what should we look to obtain as replacement hardware that is 1) not 
> > too new to
> > work, 2) not too old to work, 3) not too costly for our budgets, and 
> > 4) likely
> > to continue to work long enough to justify the cost before it, too, 
> > gets broken
> > permanently and without warning?  We users need some information, 
> > some guidelines.
>
> It is pretty well known that amdgpu is in a much better shape than 
> legacy radeon.
>
> So the answer is kinda obvious and has been floating around on mailing 
> lists and chat rooms for a long time:
> AMD GCN architecture cards are actually well supported,
> while pre-GCN relics (TeraScale/R600 and older) are "best effort" 
> hopefully-supported-but-have-a-debugger-ready.
>
> Polaris (RX 460/470/480/550/560/570/580/590) and Vega (56/64/FE/VII) 
> are the two recent generations that got particularly popular, many many 
> people actually use them heavily, they are 100% the best choice 
> currently.
> But I would expect earlier GCN chips (Tahiti, Bonaire, Tonga, Pitcairn, 
> Hawaii, Fiji, etc.) to work about as well generally, I don't remember a 
> single model-specific complaint from users of these generations.
>
> As for what's too new:
>
> - currently "Big Navi" (RX 6800/XT/6900) is really 100% too new, we'll 
> have to jump from 5.4-5.5 to >5.10. I would like to get one of those 
> eventually, when the market becomes less ridiculous.
> - Renoir APUs (Ryzen 4xxx integrated graphics) are too new for the 
> current stable drm 5.4, they do work on my 5.5-wip-amd-pr branch though 
> https://github.com/freebsd/drm-kmod/pull/45#issuecomment-757333394 \o/
> - Navi 1 (RX 5500/5600/5700) I think just works on the default current 
> versions of everything?? Or maybe sort of requires 
> https://github.com/freebsd/drm-kmod/pull/45 ? Several people use it 
> already just fine.
>
     Thank you, Greg!  At LAST, some useful information!  I would have
thought that Niclas Zeising, for example, might have provided such info
many months ago.  I can now *try* to find something I can afford that is
supported.  Nevertheless, the vendor, AMD in this case, should still be
apprised of its failure.
     My card, manufactured by MSI, appears not be be among the "island"
versions you describe as supported, but rather in the batch just prior
to those.  I will look again now, based upon your message.  Thank you
again.


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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