Can I overclock the GPU on my Orange Pi 5!?

[fredrum]

Hello!!

I got Dolphin running under Armbian and it seems its mainly GPU bound for the games that Iv'e tested.

I am aware that the Panfrost drivers are not optimal but I thought I'd like to try and squeeze a few extra fps out of this setup by overclocking the GPU if that's possible.

 

Is it? And does anyone know how I can do that?

 

Cheers! 

 

 

[Efe Çetin]

You can customize OPP table of GPU but i don't recommend it. It may be harmful for the board

[fredrum]

Do you have any pointers to how to go about doing that?
I searched around and found a few messages here and there about OPP tables but they were for CPU only. 
I couldn't find an example for GPU.

[occupied_username]

Hi Fredrum,

 

I do not mean to hijack your thread, but could you share the procedure you used to get dolphin running?

 

I have been banging my head against getting it set up for weeks now.

 

So, well done!

 

All the best,

Nicolaj

[fredrum]

Hey if you start a new thread about Dolphin I'll reply to you there!
It would be good a have a special Dolphin thread anyway!

 

UPDATE:  I made a thread with descriptions here for you,

 

 

Edited March 8, 2023 by fredrum

[occupied_username]

Hi again,

 

This time I might actually have a relevant reply 🙂

 

Have you looked into the stuff ChrisBread did with his OPi5?

 

I haven't tried any of it, but it would be, what I would try first (namely the "governor"-stuff, as he reports it is low risk and high gain).

 

Here is a link to one of his posts within the original thread, though I think we would need to piece the most efficient approach together from a collection of posts:

 

 

Break a leg!

 

[fredrum]

Cool thanks I think Iv'e missed that message from ChrisBread so will definitely see if that kernel patch works with the current Armbian images.

Or if I can find a setup that works. I'm not so so sharp with kernel hacking patching but I can probably figure it out.

UPDATE:  Just found this on the panfork issues page relating to the same kernel patch,

https://gitlab.com/panfork/mesa/-/issues/12

I have tried the 'governor' trick as iv'e come across it in a few threads. 

There's a few discussions on the *cough* radxa *cough* Rock 5 forums.

For just the governor setting I saw no noticable fps increase. Maybe because once an app start doing gpu work it should request 100% effort by the gpu?

Or it might be because the drivers are not efficient enough the way they work so there's already a different type of performance ceiling?

 

UPDATE2:  There's also some currently ongoing work by collabora with some 'pancsf' driver that *might* help the sitation I'm not 100% clear but I belive it might improve gl task scheduling amongs things. Something which if I understand correctly is one of the things that are not great with the current panfork driver, even according to 'icecream95' himself.

 

If someone is good with kernel hacking you might try this which seems to have an early version of that new collabora driver,

NOTE though that this work is done for the main 'Panfrost' driver.  (Not the rockchip panfork one)

 

https://github.com/Googulator/linux-rk3588-midstream

https://github.com/Googulator/linux-rk3588-midstream/commit/f563c09394db72ff99e18fd038c78abd46228a77

 

 

Edited March 10, 2023 by fredrum
words

[fredrum]

 

Awesome I installed those kernel patches and they do actually work!! 

I'll make another Dolphin video some time later today but it makes a significant difference to fps.

glmark2-es2 now scores 1244 whereas before I think it was 8-900 something like that.

(its insane that the vendor blob drivers had ~3700)

 

Here's what you can do if you want to also try those kernel patches(?):

Download the three .deb files from

https://github.com/ChisBread/linux-orangepi/releases/tag/v1.06.002

 

cd to where they are.

 

You need to install old python (python2) I'm sure there's a correct way to do the following but I did,
 

sudo apt install python2
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/python2 /usr/bin/python

 

sudo dpkg -i ./linux-dtb-legacy-rockchip-rk3588_1.0.6_arm64.deb
sudo dpkg -i ./linux-headers-legacy-rockchip-rk3588_1.0.6_arm64.deb
sudo dpkg -i ./linux-image-legacy-rockchip-rk3588_1.0.6_arm64.deb

 

I then also did the following as it was mentioned.

I haven't tested before-after so not sure if its actually neccessary,

PAN_MESA_DEBUG=gofaster
export PAN_MESA_DEBUG=gofaster

glmark2 Score: 1244

 

 

 

UPDATE:

I just redid the benchmark test but this time with that governor set to 'performance' and got even higher score!
Also I used the wayland version of the benchmark app not sure if that makes much difference as I think the rendering is done off screen anyway.

su -
echo performance > /sys/devices/platform/fb000000.gpu/devfreq/fb000000.gpu/governor
echo performance > /sys/devices/platform/dmc/devfreq/dmc/governor
glmark2-es2-wayland

glmark2 Score: 1730

I can't notice any big difference in Dolphin fps so maybe the governor thing mostly helps with the benchmark?
And warning that the governor settings will set your opi to run these constantly at full throttle so it'll get hotter and draw more power. You can easily reverse this when you don't want them any longer.

 

 

 

It would be amazing if someone was able to try out the official Panfrost driver with that new 'pancsf' thinghy.

As they mention,

"Glmark2 improves from ~500 to ~1700 with performance governor."

(though I have no idea what hardware that is, I think it might be some rk3588 though)

 

Edited March 12, 2023 by fredrum
fix