New AMD Graphics Drivers?

Support & Help Requests
1

I am running Ubuntu Mate 16.04 on a Gigabyte BRIX with an AMD A8-5557M CPU and Radeon™ HD 8550G graphics chip. At the time I installed 16.04, there were warnings about problems with the AMD graphics drivers. After trying 16.04 from a USB drive, I concluded that despite some minor graphics problems it was better overall than 15.10.

I’ve been using 16.04 for about six months now and was wondering whether new drivers were available for my specific graphics chip. If anyone knows, I’d appreciate it if you could direct me to where I can get them.

Thanks in advance.

Jerry

2

It is not always easy to determine what Radeon GPU you have. One good way is to let the system tell you what it thinks the GPU is.

Open a terminal, and run:

dmesg | grep "drm.*icrocode"

You should see results like:

$ dmesg | grep "drm.*icrocode"
[    1.901648] [drm] Loading CEDAR Microcode

In my case, the CEDAR GPU is supported by the plain Radeon driver. What is your GPU?

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3

Okay, Dave. I get the following report from terminal.

[ 3.240963] [drm] Loading ARUBA Microcode

Also, the manufacturer’s specs say the my graphics are “Radeon™ HD 8550G.”

Where do I go from here?

Jerry

4

That device is supported by the radeon driver. The amdgpu and amdgpu-pro drivers are for newer GPUs.

What problems are you having?

5

AMD graphics drivers are currently in a state of flux. As of Ubuntu 16.04 they are no longer providing a proprietary driver, formerly fglrx, which is why you saw that notification. Right now the open source Radeon driver is all that is available unless you have a newer video card. I believe GCN 1.1 cards and higher are supported by the new AMDGPU-Pro driver. The open source driver is fine for normal day to day use but gaming performance isn’t great.

6

Hi @jrioux,

see also:

7

Dave,

I guess that the radeon drivers you mentioned are either built in to 16.04 or were installed when I updated my drivers from the Welcome screen. When I go there now, it says “…the drivers you are currently using will deliver the most stable performance out of your card.”

My problems are really minor and I’m not really sure whether they’re caused by the driver.

First, the alternative text on web pages and in other program windows is often squished or garbled - random lines or graphics rather the text. At one point, this almost always happened. It’s less often now.

The other thing is that the icons at the top right of every program window are generally invisible - you know the buttons for minimizing, maximizing and closing the window. They work, I just don’t see them.

I don’t do heavy gaming, so that’s not an issue.

Jerry

8

Thanks. I was checking to see if there was anything new in the last six months.

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9

Thanks, that’s where I started, wolfman.

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10

If this was with Google Chrome or Chromium then its a known drawing bug in Google's direct rendering engine in those Browsers.

Here is a discussion of problems and possible solutions to Chrome and Chromium drawing issues:

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This problem sounds like an incompatible theme. Have you tried switching themes?

11

Thanks for all the help, Dave. I was primarily using Chromium in the past, but now use Firefox more. That must be why that problem is not as common. I’ll try to identify when it happens and under what circumstances.

I will check out other themes, but really like the one I use. The main reason is that it has a higher contrast than the typical themes. I chose Ubuntu over Mint primarily because my old eyes have a difficult time reading things with Mint’s various standard themes.

Jerry

12

That’s odd: GreenLaguna and BlackMATE themes don’t have bitmaps for the min/max/close buttons on the window frame. Never noticed that before…

13

I’ve looked at the standard themes, but haven’t decided whether to change.

14

Hey found out this on the AMD drivers and Mesa
:http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/12/stable-mesa-drivers-ubuntu-ppa

Do you guys recommend using propietary driver and this ppa?

15

Hi @Pablo_Perez_Gutierre,

that is up to you but read the warning first!:

"But (there’s always a but) keep in mind that this is a community-run PPA and the drivers aren’t (currently) going through the same sort of testing and quality checks as those in the opt-in Nvidia PPA. There’s also no guarantee that it’ll stay up to date, or work with all sorts of configurations and set-ups."

Add This PPA: Please, please don’t add this PPA idly. If in any doubt, keep out!

16

@wolfman
Thanks a lot, keep it in mind.

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