Manual GPU clock speeds keep resetting

[Bel]

I can set the gpu clock manually to 1600 MHz, but it seems like the setting doesn't stick sometimes when switching games or resuming, then it goes make to fluctuating.

[Marlock]

how are you setting it?

[Bel]

Just activating the manual GPU clock setting and cranking it up to the max 1600. It will work when I first toggle it on, but it tends to go back to auto-clocks quite often.

[PenguinYayOne]

This bug still exists. The way to reproduce it:
-Set a fixed GPU core clock
-Change the performance UI level a couple of times
-The core GPU core clock becomes unlimited even though it is still limited on the UI

[HOBaRT]

This is still a bug, can reproduce 100% of the time:
- TDP limit disabled (it gets worse when it's enabled and tends to get stuck at 200 MHz)
- Manual GPU clock speed set to 1600 MHz
- Performance Overlay Level 4
1. Open a game/emulator and note the GPU clock speeds (should be 1600Mhz)
2. Do something so that the game has to load something (e.g. high CPU usage and pretty much no GPU usage)
3. GPU will remain at 1600 MHz during the loading process
4. When GPU actually has to start working/rendering again (or if the GPU load otherwise suddenly increases), the GPU will drop to 700-800MHz for no apparent reason, and will remain back on "auto" until manual GPU clock control is toggled off and on (changing the frequency slider will no longer work)

A good number of emulators technically are not doing heavy GPU work, but need the higher clocks for latency reasons (e.g. 20% usage at 1600 MHz results in much higher speeds and smoother framerates than are achievable at 40% usage at 800MHz; it's a huge difference of 60FPS vs 40FPS), and it's really annoying I have to keep toggling it.

This is without any mods/plugins to Steam that I'm aware of. I also tried Decky/PowerTools and the issue persists there; something somewhere in the system is forcefully overriding the GPU clock control.


Edit: indeed, amdgpu's power_dpm_force_performance_level is getting reset to "auto" in these situations for no apparent reason, and with my initial tracing, it seems like the kernel driver is doing it on its own. Lovely.

[HOBaRT]

I've identified a fix in the upstream mainline kernel and backported that to the Steam Deck's 5.13. It seems to work, and I've sent it off to a valve kernel maintainer so hopefully that will hit the deck sometime soon.

[vekinuma]

Has this been fixed yet or has anyone found a fix? I have to set it manually each time I play otherwise I crash for whatever reason, so I was hoping I can change a value permanently somewhere. Thanks.

[HOBaRT]

Originally posted by vekinuma:

Has this been fixed yet or has anyone found a fix? I have to set it manually each time I play otherwise I crash for whatever reason, so I was hoping I can change a value permanently somewhere. Thanks.

This particular issue has been fixed, and GPU clocks set in per-game profiles have been working fine for me. Sounds like you have a different issue.

[kofii12345]

Have the same issue

[HOBaRT]

Originally posted by kofii12345:

Have the same issue

Originally posted by aburri:

Same issue, on stable channels.

This is likely a different issue. The previous one was a kernel bug that'd reset the clocks any time any graphical context was destroyed. With the current one, the Steam game launcher just seems to not be remembering to set the custom GPU clock speed properly?

[steve]

Originally posted by bobmcjr101:

Originally posted by kofii12345:

Have the same issue

Originally posted by aburri:

Same issue, on stable channels.

This is likely a different issue. The previous one was a kernel bug that'd reset the clocks any time any graphical context was destroyed. With the current one, the Steam game launcher just seems to not be remembering to set the custom GPU clock speed properly?

Yep having this issue too, just won’t remember the setting in any game, specifically the toggle. Once the toggle is switched on again the clock setting is remembered

[Geenaxion]

Happened to mine. It keeps resetting to off

[MartyWF]

Same

[Daenerim]

Same problem here

[lem]

Same problem when restarting games.

[EridanFresh]

Same problem!