Recognition of AMD(Pro) video cards in HIP (Linux)

Support Technical Support
1

Hello dear!

I have been trying to switch to Linux for a long time, but fate does not allow me to do this fully.

According to this link, I created an idea of whether it can be called that, so just in case, I will make an entry for the discussion here.

I see that such records stopped around 2010.
On this, I will try to resume the topic.

I have been using AMD technologies for about 20 years, and I try to popularize and distribute free software, hence the great interest in Linux, I believe that this system structures the technical consciousness and supports skill. But it’s not easy when you’re not a professional system administrator, but an ordinary freelance artist. But I really want to be friends and keep up with technology in a timely manner!

So, about the topic of discussion, installing various Linux distributions, starting from the generations of Ryzen, I came across strange errors, and it turned out that the motherboard was not friendly with Linux at all, it was ASRock AB350Pro4.
As a result, it was necessary to abandon this process for several years. At the moment, I replaced all the components, and the motherboard is also from ASRock (B550 Pro4)

My system:

  • #AMD #ASRock #AB350Pro4
  • #R93900X
  • AMD #RadeonPRO - #W5500

Probably my destiny is to dance with tambourines around the system)))

So, now on the 6th core of Linux, the motherboard is working fine, but the video driver… refuses to live.
I tried Manjaro, settings and recommendations from AUR, UBUNTU recommendations on other forums. They are either not enough, or they are very old, in general, it was not possible to install the driver for the Radeon PRO W5500, in the end I returned to Windows.

Maybe someone came across, or knows how to do it?

I work with #Blender, and all the information that I found said that the blender for Linux requires a proprietary driver, otherwise the video card (By the way, the processor) is not displayed in the program settings to select the processing of cycles. Free driver, does not work with a video card, but the rendering on the processor works, and on Linux it took several times longer.

Maybe this is a problem of HIP and AMD developers themselves?

PRO video card, but there are no sense and possibilities in it…

2

Display drivers (OpenGL and Vulkan) are covered by mesa, and PRO cards should be supported by it AFAIK (I don’t have one to tell for sure).

For GPU rendering in Blender you will need ROCm software stack, which is open source and available on Github if you are brave enough to compile it yourself. You can also get it from AMD directly - ROCm is packaged inside PRO drivers. Or you can get it from distro repository if its packaged (Gentoo, Arch, and recently Debian). I never used Arch based distro, so I don’t know what is the state of ROCm in AUR. ROCm in Debian is in pretty rough shape as the packaging is not finished yet.

If you are installing PRO drivers from official AMD repo (in case of Ubuntu for example) you should check:

  • Ubuntu version
  • Linux kernel version
  • ROCm version

ROCm most likely won’t work if the versions don’t match the officially supported configuration.

Also PRO drivers have display component that is used instead of mesa. And mesa is usually faster and works better. Best AMD driver combination in my opinion is mesa+ROCm packaged by a distro. That way you will get mesa display performance and (in theory) ROCm stack that works with latest Linux kernel.

Last thing - I don’t think your RCS proposal will have any effect. ROCm Linux support does not look like Blender’s responsibility. More like AMD + Linux distro one.

3 Likes
3

Even AMD is only listing Windows 11 fro this…
https://www.amd.com/en/products/professional-graphics/radeon-pro-w5500

…and they were much nicer with linu(s/x) than Nvidia :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

4

Check my thread Blender 3.4 with AMD GPU 22 drivers - #2 by silex
What i did was:

  1. install Ubuntu 20.4.1 LTS
  2. install AMD GPU driver installer from AMD site (it was 22.40 for me)
  3. install all updates and upgrade your Ubuntu with system upgrade tool
  4. sudo amdgpu-install --usecase=graphics,opencl --vulkan=amdvlk --opencl=legacy (it can show missing .bin files but dont care)
  5. sudo apt-get update
  6. sudo apt-get upgrade
  7. reboot
  8. sudo apt-get install mesa-utils
  9. sudo amdgpu-install -y
  10. and the last final step to make Blender see the card is described on my thread
2 Likes
5

Maybe, but I couldn’t run them))
I would love to do it, but … I did not succeed.
In some cases MHWD said that it doesn’t work with this driver. In some Ubuntu, but here I did not understand why the blender does not see the card, it was stated that immediately after installation it will be displayed.

6

about! thank you very much! Today I’ll try!

Roughly speaking, the Linux version should be selected according to the working driver, and not vice versa? )))

7

no, it didn’t work even at the level of the first team.
I tried it in another way, according to the manual from here

then something stirred, long installations took place, but the blender does not see either the processor or the video card.

8

This is the reason why linux never suceed in people homes - thousands of unresolved dependencies and relations between libraries making it unusable for majority.
Check if the driver was installed with “glxinfo -B”

1 Like
9

Dependencies between libraries are usually controlled with the package manager…
Driver issues are different between distributions because most of the drivers aren’t from the graphic card producers…

So:

  • Up to date hardware → up to date distribution (with the possibility to break something)
  • Slightly older (more known) hardware → more solid system

(So the argumentation is not very strong… (and also doesn’t help the OP)… there where also other OS’s which just wasn’t bundled with a new PC… so it is more a marketing thing…
I also never understood this claim about linux and suceed… it’s not one corporations but also different dsitributions to choose from… And if someone believes an operations system which doesn’t cost anything… just should work… with the newest hardware…
What was it in windows when a print sysem was updated and the computer stopped booting… at all !?
And it is in your Android phone, Blue Ray player, NAS, TV… and car charging station, the websites and webservices you are visiting… but yes that’s another story… and that’s also the reason why i put this in paranthesis…)

1 Like
10

You wasn’t able to install the drivers for Windows 11 ???

…then you might have another problem…
:question:

11

0_o
No, everything is in order, Windows also has problems, but these are problems of the driver itself. But everything is ok on Windows, why did you think

12

@Okidoki

Driver issues are different between distributions because most of the drivers aren’t from the graphic card producers

Yes, this is what i want to say by saying “unresolved depednencies”. Even on the system for which the driver is intended, you may encounter this problem if you have previously made major changes to the system, e.g. by installing libraries from outside the official repositories.

@pawall3deller
As far as i check Blender 3.4 with HIP enabled is 3x slower than Blender 2.93LTS with OpenCL enabled for the same hardware under Linux and Windows.

13

By the way, it’s a good idea to try the previous versions to check the driver))
I’ll try to experiment.

Just what is strange for me is that HIP does not show any processor or video card, maybe for Linux it is normal when the processor is running in stock, but blender should distinguish between hardware, and this is strange. It is also strange that Blender did not leave the old OpenCL system as an additional one. It seems that it could be left at the same performance level and not subjected to refinement (Since they moved away from this), but the access of old video cards would remain.

14

Закладки, [08.01.2023 16:56]
name of display: :0
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
Extended renderer info (GLX_MESA_query_renderer):
Vendor: AMD (0x1002)
Device: AMD Radeon Pro W5500 (navi14, LLVM 14.0.1, DRM 3.49, 5.15.0-57-generic) (0x7341)
Version: 22.1.0
Accelerated: yes
Video memory: 8192MB
Unified memory: no
Preferred profile: core (0x1)
Max core profile version: 4.6
Max compat profile version: 4.6
Max GLES1 profile version: 1.1
Max GLES[23] profile version: 3.2
Memory info (GL_ATI_meminfo):
VBO free memory - total: 7647 MB, largest block: 7647 MB
VBO free aux. memory - total: 15964 MB, largest block: 15964 MB
Texture free memory - total: 7647 MB, largest block: 7647 MB
Texture free aux. memory - total: 15964 MB, largest block: 15964 MB
Renderbuffer free memory - total: 7647 MB, largest block: 7647 MB
Renderbuffer free aux. memory - total: 15964 MB, largest block: 15964 MB
Memory info (GL_NVX_gpu_memory_info):
Dedicated video memory: 8192 MB
Total available memory: 24203 MB
Currently available dedicated video memory: 7647 MB
OpenGL vendor string: AMD
OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon Pro W5500 (navi14, LLVM 14.0.1, DRM 3.49, 5.15.0-57-generic)
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.6 (Core Profile) Mesa 22.1.0-devel
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.60
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile

OpenGL version string: 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 22.1.0-devel
OpenGL shading language version string: 4.60
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL profile mask: compatibility profile

OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.2 Mesa 22.1.0-devel
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.20

Blender 2.78 also not detected, no processor and video card.

15

This should work because Blender wants minimum 22.1. Try run sudo ./blender and check if card is visible then.

16

Such a command cannot exist.
With the sudo option, blender doesn’t show the driver, gpu, cpu.
I’ve already tried adding the user to the Render groups, nothing…

17

Such a command cannot exist.

Check 4. https://www.wikihow.com/Run-a-Program-from-the-Command-Line-on-Linux

Sorry I have no more ideas why Blender see card as root and not as an user in my case and not at all in your case.

18

Hey! I have to clarify for the W5500.
In short, blender will only be supported on Windows on this video card, since ROcM is required, and it does not support this video card.

19

I think your on to something here so far as advice is concerned.

I bought a graphic add on card specifically to use Blender, it works fine in Windows yet all kinds of trouble with LInux; Debian, Mint, Fedora. When it comes to working drivers Mint and Fedora will run Blender 2.48a.exe fine using WINE application. Whatever version of Blender that is the default in the repositories is your best choice to avoid major problems, stability in mind here. I’ve given up trying to install appropriate drivers to get HIP running in Linux using a card, too many time consuming problems that do not make it worth while trying, especially considering the risks involved. Lost Linux operating systems too many times as a result of trying different options. I run multi-operating systems, Mint, Fedora, Debian and Windows. The highest risk comes around as a result of attempting to upgrade this type of set up after trying different alternatives to get HIP working in cycles mode of Blender. Linux Debian based distros have too many Grub boot loader flaws or deliberate problems caused with o/s prober missing Fedora as part of the boot loader menu. The problem in a couple of incidents got so bad as a program in Mint live considered to be a way to recover problems with the boot loader entitled “Boot Repair” actually wiped out all my files in the Boot directory of a Fedora operating system making it impossible to run. It’s as though Debian based distros do not want you to use Fedora, the same problem Windows is accused of for not recognizing any Linux operating systems if installed after a Linux installation on a machine. Many times risk is there when simply upgrading a Debian based distro if that update includes something where the boot loader files are involved.
The proprietary drivers provided by AMD/Radeon for Windows work well so may as well use a Windows operating system when running Blender. Chances are very high that after spending a lot of time getting your drivers to work on Linux some Blender new version will break everything and your back to the start line. Then again the same risk is involved when a LInux distro is upgraded or updated. Is it really worth all that time and effort? Until drivers for LInux running Blender in GPU or HIP cycles become less unstable and on par with a Windows installation, your better off sticking with whatever operating system works best for your needs. Whatever version of Blender that is installed by default in your specific flavor of LInux being used is your best option for use if you have to use that operating system alone. You’ll most likely still have the full functions of using Evee instead of Cycles, well at least from my personal experience (which is limited to my own personal set up).

What I find truly contradictory to the Linux policy of freedom is that an open source program designed specifically for Linux runs better on proprietary software like Windows when it comes to graphic cards features. Although AMD claims to support Linux by making a few drivers available and Nvidia does provide some drivers yet do not openly claim to support Linux, they are hit and miss so far as functionality and taking advantage of all their features.

1 Like
20

I said goodbye to linux as a digital artist by profession. This system is for networks and management, maximum for office and labor organization.

This system does not want to develop further.