New AMD Linux patch boosts low-end gaming performance on Steam Deck

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AMD新补丁让Steam Deck在省电模式下游戏不再卡顿。简单来说，Steam Deck为了省电会开启一个“节能偏好”模式，但之前的驱动有个bug：当游戏线程频繁短暂休眠再唤醒时，系统会误以为不需要高性能，导致唤醒后频率上不去，从而出现画面延迟、掉帧。如果强行调到“性能模式”虽然不卡了，但电也耗得更快。而新的补丁聪明地解决了这个两难问题，既保证省电又消除低帧卡顿。对普通玩家而言，这意味着手头的Steam Deck不用换新机，也能在低功耗下流畅运行更多游戏，大大延长了掌机的使用寿命。特别是那些追求长续航的玩家，这个补丁简直是雪中送炭。

As the Steam Deck slowly marches toward its fifth birthday next February, owners are likely eager for a way to extend its life rather than investing in expensive high-end competition. A new patch for AMD's Linux drivers could substantially reduce low-end frame hitches when the Steam Deck or other AMD-based gaming hardware is running in Energy Performance Preference (EPP) mode. Writing on the Linux kernel mailing list (thanks, Phoronix), kernel coder David Vernet lays out the basic problem that games often face in EPP mode. When a busy thread frequently goes to sleep for short periods, the current AMD driver can misinterpret that behavior as a signal to lower its average performance target. When those threads wake up, they start at a lower-than-desired frequency, leading to increased frame latency, stale frames, and longer frame generation times at the low end of the distribution. Shifting the processor to "performance" mode fixes this problem but eliminates the energy savings that EPP mode is supposed to provide. And simply boosting the affected thread's minimum performance target permanently actually makes low-end performance worse, thanks to the complexities of CPU/GPU boost management.Read full article Comments