ACO testing instructions

[Pierre-Loup]

If you run games on Steam with radv on AMD, you might want to test ACO! For more details, refer to this announcement.

Note: things are at an early stage and testing is likely to expose bugs and GPU crashes. Currently, ACO will only work with Vulkan on GCN 3.0+ AMD cards running against the Mesa radv driver.

Source code:

If you know how to build radv, the testing branch is at the master branch of this repository:

https://github.com/daniel-schuermann/mesa

Distribution packages:

Arch Linux

ACO is available on AUR as mesa-aco-git[aur.archlinux.org] and lib32-mesa-aco-git[aur.archlinux.org].

Ubuntu

We're maintaining PPAs for Ubuntu 18.04[launchpad.net] and Ubuntu 19.04[launchpad.net]. It's recommended to ppa-purge any other PPAs that include Mesa like oibaf or padoka before testing, and re-add them when testing is complete.

For example, to start testing on Ubuntu 18.04:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:valve-experimental/mesa-bionic
sudo apt dist-upgrade

To revert back to normal Mesa:

sudo ppa-purge ppa:valve-experimental/mesa-bionic

Fedora

https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/xxmitsu/mesa-aco/

Testing instructions:

The testing branch has ACO enabled by default. To confirm proper installation, it should spew this message to the console whenever an app that uses it is started:

WARNING: Experimental compiler backend enabled. Here be dragons! Incorrect rendering, GPU hangs and/or resets are likely

If it doesn't seem to be taking, check if the application you're trying to run might be 32-bit and need a 32-bit version of radv.

ACO can be disabled with the following environment variable: RADV_PERFTEST=llvm

We'll be tracking issues on this bug tracker in this early stage:

https://github.com/daniel-schuermann/mesa/issues

The sort of bugs we're looking for:

• Games that don't run at all
  
• Games that exhibit graphical corruption
  
• Games that exhibit lower performance

For all issues, a good list of steps before filing an issue would be:

• If it's a new issue since July 29th, odds are it's related to the newly-introduced vertex shader support. RADV_PERFTEST=llvmvs can disable only vertex shaders for triaging purposes. If it looks vertex shader-specific, be sure to include that information in the bug report.
  
• Double-check the issue is ACO-specific by setting RADV_PERFTEST=llvm
  
• Look through the repository for potential duplicates of the same issue

Include all relevant details, the title of the game, and complete reproduction steps. For advanced users, a RenderDoc capture of a frame that works with LLVM and is broken with ACO would be ideal to include with bug reports.

Feel free to share any performance comparisons that aren't regressions in this thread[github.com]. Any performance regression should be filed as its own issue as per the above.

Q: What hardware is supported?

A: GCN 3.0+ only for now, so anything in the Rx 300 series and above should work.

Q: Is it radv-only or will RadeonSI work?

A: radv for now, but we intend to look at RadeonSI once things are farther along.

[thetargos]

Interesting. I hope there are many testers, sadly I am of the green camp for the time being, but the more exposition and feedback you could get, the better for all.

[Glacial Turtle]

Does this support all hardware supported by RADV (GCN 1.0+)? Does it also replace the shader compiler for OpenGL?

[INS dano]

No, it's Vulkan only on VI+.
GCN 1.0+ and future hardware (Navi) are on the TODO list.
Support for OpenGL will maybe come some time.

[Aoi Blue]

There would be more testers if someone would make an Ubuntu PPA for this.

[troylights]

I'm using the Padoka stable Mesa 19 ppa for Ubuntu 18.04. Will the distribution packages mentioned be available as a ppa? I had stopped using the Oibaf ppa due to its rapid development and rendering issues introduced at times in the development branch of Mesa. Will the distro packages be built on a stable Mesa release in order to make it possible to see the actual differences between ACO and LLVM, not bugs and regressions introduced by Mesa dev?

[Aoi Blue]

Originally posted by troylights:

I'm using the Padoka stable Mesa 19 ppa for Ubuntu 18.04. Will the distribution packages mentioned be available as a ppa? I had stopped using the Oibaf ppa due to its rapid development and rendering issues introduced at times in the development branch of Mesa. Will the distro packages be built on a stable Mesa release in order to make it possible to see the actual differences between ACO and LLVM, not bugs and regressions introduced by Mesa dev?

Well, someone could clone a branch of Podoka Mesa Stable with this patchset added.

Specifically use this patchset branch of Mesa imported into the build script bundle.

I'd do it myself but I've been sick and feeling seriously awful.

[Tynach]

I second the request for a PPA to test. I'm actually curious if it could maybe be added to one of the Padoka PPAs, perhaps the unstable variant.

On the topic of hardware support, 'Rx 300 and up' is a little weird because the R9 390 uses the same generation of GCN as the R9 290 (known as 'Hawaii', and the R9 390 is sometimes known as 'Grenada', other times as 'Hawaii Pro'). As a result, sometimes things meant for the Rx 300 series and up can also work on my R9 290X... And other times, things meant for the Rx 300 series and up can't work on the R9 390, nor on my R9 290X.

So, will this work with my R9 290X?

[zaggyNL]

RX Vega 56 user here on amdgpu for games, awaiting PPA.

[Aoi Blue]

I have an Rx 480 and would definately test if a PPA is available.

If I felt better I'd make one myself.

[grinceur]

I m gonna put Arch on my main rig just for the AUR :)

[Mister Paytwick /LLAMATRCKR/]

Originally posted by Tynach:

So, will this work with my R9 290X?

I don't know for R9 290X, but it work on R9 380X. At worst, you shouldn't even lose the display and rolling back is just (hopefully) reinstalling the packages you had to remove to install ACO.

While I don't seems to have better FPS in Dota 2 on Vulkan, The Compute Shaders option doesn't introduce mini freezes anymore (well, had one at loading screen when I first loaded into a game, but then nothing after that).

EDIT: Note that R9 380X is GCN 3rd generation, while R9 290X is GCN 2nd, so as far as I understand that, it worth the test.

[puleglot]

Originally posted by Tynach:

So, will this work with my R9 290X?

Very unlikely. 290/390 is CI (Sea Islands), the generation before VI (Volcanic Islands). And ACO currently only supports VI+.

Upd: It definitely will not work:
https://github.com/daniel-schuermann/mesa/commit/011859b892981ce9ec5071d84abc9cff693fa216

[Gryxx]

RPM's?

[𝓫𝓸𝓫𝓫𝔂]

Will test as soon as there's a PPA available.

[asdf]

Originally posted by Tynach:

I
So, will this work with my R9 290X?

your card is very hungry
get a new one and it will pay for itself, because it saves you a lot of power