Rovclock

General

Rovclock is a utility to control frequency rates of your Radeon card.

It is very helpful for underclocking the Radeon chip in order to save power when running on batteries. Also, by underclocking it is possible to prevent the fan from running.

It can also be used to gain performance by overclocking.

NOTE!

While this utility complements the DynamicClocks option of the X.org radeon driver, it is not compatible with the power saving mode of the fglrx driver. Setting power saving mode using both fglrx and rovclock results in an unusably slow desktop.

Features

Used to under-/overclock Radeon gfx-cards.

• Controls GPU core frequency
• Controls gfx-memory frequency

Project Homepage / Availability

• Homepage: http://www.hasw.net/linux/

Usage

• Set the core frequency (-c) to 100 Mhz and the memory frequency (-m) to 120 Mhz.

$ sudo rovclock -c 100 -m 120

• Get current frequencies among other information (-i).

$ sudo rovclock -i

Minimum stable clockrates

• A30p with Radeon 7000
  • LCD: No lower core limit, 90MHz mem (basic use) / 125MHz mem (no artifacts with glxgears)
• T42 with Radeon 7500
  NOTE: Setting the memory under 100Mhz may hang your card.
  • LCD: 100MHz core, 120MHz memory.
  • Using DVI output on Port replicator: 100Mhz core, 180MHz memory.
• T42 with Radeon 9600
  • LCD: Core: 54.0 MHz, Mem: 60.75 MHz
• T42p Firegl T2 (9600), fglrx driver
  • 1600x1200 LCD: Core: 81 Mhz, Mem: 67.5 Mhz
• T43 with ATI Mobility Radeon X300:
  • 100MHz core, 120Mz memory (see more here)
• X31 with ATI Radeon Mobility M6 LY:
  • 90MHz core, 100Mz memory (90/90 is giving distorted picture)
• R50p with FireGL Mobility T2:
  • 1600x1200 LCD: Core: 100 MHz Mem: 120Mz
• R51 with FireGL 9000
  • Core: 40 Mhz Mem: 100 Mhz (2d only, reducing memory further causes some artifacts and doesn't visibly reduce temps.)

See also

• How to make use of Graphics Chips Power Management features using the DynamicClocks option of the radeon driver
• Gentoo forum discussion
• Radeontool