[Bug 97856] Computer restart playing 3D games (possibly overheating)

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=97856

            Bug ID: 97856
           Summary: Computer restart playing 3D games (possibly
                    overheating)
           Product: DRI
           Version: XOrg git
          Hardware: Other
                OS: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: medium
         Component: DRM/Radeon
          Assignee: dri-devel at lists.freedesktop.org
          Reporter: tukkek at gmail.com

Hello, sorry if I'm reporting this to the wrong product but the bug report
procedures on the wiki are pretty hard to understand
https://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/#index11h2

I have an onboard Radeon HD 3000 (ATI RS780L). I am primarily using Debian
testing ("stretch"). I believe the open source drivers for it are providade by
the following packages:

linux-image-4.6.0-1-amd64 (4.6.4-1, radeon.ko)
xserver-xorg-video-ati (1:7.7.0-1)
xserver-xorg-video-radeon (1:7.7.0-1, radeon_drv.so, due to update in a few
days)

The problem I'm having is that when playing 3D games the computer will randomly
crash and reboot after anywhere from 10 minutes into the game, to over an hour
of gameplay without rebooting (mostly around 10-30 minutes with a crash). It
seems to be heat-related because when it's cooler it seems the game has less
chance of crashing and when a crash happens and I try playing again after the
reboot is complete, the crash seems to happen more rapidly - maybe after 5
minutes or so playing.

The crash seems to be some sort of hardware failure because there are no trace
in the journald persistent logs that I can find. For this, I can't also be sure
what is happening. Let me know if there is something I can do to help debug
this.

To verity if the error was the driver's fault I installed a new Debian system
(oldstable, Debian 7 "wheezy"), which allowed me to install the fglrx legacy
driver with Radeon HD 3000 support. In this new system I haven't experienced a
single reboot so far - which establishes the cause isn't hardware-only related
but very likely a driver issue. Being an entirely new system means it could be
something else too but since I have very frequent crashes/reboots in my primary
system and none so far in the alternate system while running games for an hour
or so frequently on a hot day, would indicate that the fault is indeed coming
from the Radeon open-source criver.

I haven't done any 3D gaming in this computer before a couple of weeks from now
so I can't say that this bug only happens on recent driver versions or not.
Watching videos in a browser or in a video application (such as VLC) and 2D
games like http://littlewargame.com or rendering videos (via kdenlive or such)
do not cause reboots, even though they can be relatively heavy on the GPU. I
haven't had any random crashes in a very long while as well except when doing
3D gaming. I've installed a few games to test it out and whenever 3D gaming the
crashes do happen frequently. Some of the games I've used to test this are
Heroes of Newerth and Runescape (both free to download and play) and very
lightweigth in the low settings, so it shouldn't be a quesiton of me stressing
the card too much either (HoN for example works fine with the fglrx legacy
driver on my alternate system).

I have run memtest86, CPU and memory stress (stress-ng 0.06.15-1) in the hopes
of catching a spike in my machine's temperature as the culprit for these random
crashes but I've found the temperature to be stable and low even during heavy
load for a long time. I've ran the Geeks3D GpuTest, which puts a heavier load
than these games on the graphics card but haven't been able to cause a crash,
even though in this case my tests haven't been extensible - I can run them for
longer though if it would help debug the issue.

I undestand that there have been recent updates on the graphics drivers on the
new Linux kernel update. I will try the new drivers as they come out since it's
somewhat of a bother having to reboot the computer (and maintain a legacy
system) whenever I want to play 3D games and if the problem is solved I'll
report back here. If I don't comment on this issue in the near future it's
because the problem persists even with the new drivers.

My guess about what is happening: since the problem seems to be heat-related
maybe there is some sort of temperature sensor that the open source driver
isn't able to read on my card - which I was expecting to be able to see using
lmsensors (version 1:3.4.0-3) while maybe the fglrx is able to read and handle
heat properly.

I don't usually report bugs to trackers that already have many reports open but
since I've spent a long time in tracking this issue and was able to fix it, I
thought that I should share all the information I've gathered in the hope it's
useful. It's an older, onboard graphics card model, probably getting to the end
of its lifespan soon but I hope this report is valuable in some way, anyway.
Thank you for the good work on these open drivers. If I were able to use them
on my primary system I'd certainly do it, even if the fglrx legacy system is a
little bit smoother, since it would be a lot more convenient than maitaning a
separare gaming system in my machine. Thanks again for the contributions to the
FOSS community and for the time reading this report!

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