Recent Radeon Vulkan/OpenGL 3D performance drop

Support and Help
1

Ubuntu Version:
24.04

Desktop Environment (if applicable):
gnome

Problem Description:
I’ve been playing 3D OpenGL and Vulkan games on this system for about a year. I’ve got sort of a potato GPU, admittedly, BUT by tweaking settings on games to the lowest settings, I have been able to get them playable with > 30fps consistently.

However, recently something suddenly changed. I would guess it must have been either a new version of the Radeon kernel driver and/or the Radeon Mesa OGL/Vulkan drivers, but I’m not sure. Now, I can’t seem to get the SAME games I was playing fine 2 weeks ago, to play with > 20fps consistently - and at that low of a frame rate, they are all but unplayable.

Relevant System Information:
vulkaninfo GPU output:

Device Properties and Extensions:
=================================
GPU0:
VkPhysicalDeviceProperties:
---------------------------
        apiVersion        = 1.3.289 (4206881)
        driverVersion     = 24.2.8 (100671496)
        vendorID          = 0x1002
        deviceID          = 0x699f
        deviceType        = PHYSICAL_DEVICE_TYPE_DISCRETE_GPU
        deviceName        = AMD Radeon RX 550 / 550 Series (RADV POLARIS12)

Screenshots or Error Messages:
n/a

What I’ve Tried:
Made sure I had latest apt updates, rebooted.

2

What does /var/log/apt/history.log (or the /var/log/apt/history.log.*.gz files, if history further back is needed) show was updated between when your games worked fine and when the performance issues started?

If it includes a kernel update, does booting your system from the previous kernel restore reasonable performance?

3

So, after spending some time going through those files, well, first, I can’t pinpoint exactly when the performance changed. I think, sometime after Mar 7.

I’ve tried re-installing a few older versions of linux-image-6.8.0-nn-generic plus associated extra kernel modules and linux-tools for each versions (required for accellerated radeon drivers).

I have installed 47, 48, 52, 53, 54, and 55. Doesn’t seem to make a difference which kernel I boot, so I guess it’s not the kernel.

It looks like the last time the mesa driver packages were updated was in February.

So I really have no idea what might have changed to explain this. :frowning:

4

If anyone has suggestions of ways to troubleshoot or investigate the significant performance drop, it would be much appreciated.

5

To be clear, you’ve confirmed it’s some GPU/graphics related issue, and not high CPU usage or something else, that’s causing the performance drops?

If this were my system, the next thing I’d try is to reproduce the bad performance and then look through journalctl -b output to see if something there jumps out at me. Unfortunately I don’t know what specifically to suggest looking for in there, sorry.

You’ve already checked Vulkan info, similarly you could check glxinfo | less to make sure your GPU is also being used as expected for OpenGL rendering.

6

I installed some updates this morning and rebooted, but then had to go to work. I just got back,and it seems that something in the updates this morning must have fixed it, because now my fps is back up to 40+ fps on most titles.

7

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