How-to: Gentoo Linux

that means the Ai would beat me faster … mnn … :confused:

that is quite low … go ahead and run the above benchmark and see how hot your computer gets :sweat_smile:

That’s what it is even when I’m not doing anything with it. Do note that a faster system will show a lower load average, since programs spend more time waiting on events.

load average: 0.36, 0.51, 0.47 < this is mine @ 1user @ iddle on Debian 10 stable … just Purism FFox in the background … and the firewall and the weather app :stuck_out_tongue:

i run top from time to time just to see if i’m part of a DDOS bot-net-network … if i see anything suspicious network wise or in the load average or i hear any fans spinning more than they should i pull the cable … :sweat_smile:

and that’s assuming my components are not lying to me … hey it’s fine ! look you’re not willingly aiding in any corporate/state infrastructure take-downs … chill and have some Gnome-Chess while you enjoy life’s best moments :wink:

Heh, I’ve got a setup that stays pretty darn near silent even under full load. That said, I think I need to repaste my CPU block, since it’s started to idle hotter than I think it should. As for your question on temperatures, GPU tops out at 59 running the classroom benchmark, finishes a frame in just over 3 minutes. CPU mode, it takes 11 minutes, and hits 77, but as I said, I think I need to repaste the CPU block.

If you want to stress-test your cooling system, burnMMX is the way to go. It’s hand-written assembly which thrashes the memory controller, without touching system memory.

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not bad … i’ll probably wait till they update the benchmark suite for the newer 2.8 > series since that is bound to have some improvements in the cycles compute engine but linux takes the cake each time against M$ for CPU compute especially for the ryzen,threadripper,epyc

Aye, and for GPU compute on AMD cards. My R7 is 10% faster than the average listed. Hopefully the newer version will actually work properly with ROCm, it currently crashes with that backend.

yes AMD has their own proprietary implementation of the cycles render engine in Blender > https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/radeon-prorender and it’s a mixed load between CPU + GPU

the plugin is free not the ACTUAL render-engine but yeah it’s great that they match nVidia with OpenCL …

I was actually talking about their kernel drivers. The R7 got terrible reviews at launch, largely due to driver issues on windows. It’s basically an Instinct (server) card, with slightly lower clocks and actual display output; the Instinct cards are Linux only, so it’s little wonder that the Windows drivers sucked. AMD’s windows drivers are problematic at the best of times, but the Linux drivers are pretty sweet, including the new RadeonOpenCompute system.

The closed NVidia drivers are getting to be such a complete non-starter on Linux that I don’t even care what kind of performance they get. It’d be one thing if their cards could boost with the Nouveau driver, but they can’t, and without GBM support, more and more things simply won’t work.

aye, it wouldn’t be nVidia without introducing some kind of serious handicap to the performance of the nouveau driver … just because they feel that proprietary is easier and more profitable for them to maintain by themselves …

AMD is not a piece of heaven but at least they offer a decent Linux open-source driver that users can actually do something with … not free-software but at least it’s not a zombie graphics-card …

i’m on a WX pro 8200 (V56-ish with lower clocks - for CAD/CAE) but it’s the BEST i could cram in there for my needs). open-source driver still lacks many things the closed-source has but it’s not the worst either. offline most of the time. and after my L5 in convergence hopefully even more offline

oh one thing i’ve been annoyed by is the sound my graphics-card makes during post-and boot-up … until the log-in screen pops up in debian … i’m talking about the fact that if i enter UEFI settings and remain there … the gpu’s blower will ramp up and the card will produce heat way more than while simply idling at the desktop-environment level (heck not even playing 4k HDR material will produce that much heat and blower noise) and it’s something i don’t see how i could control or change settings (maybe that’s default behavior set in the vBIOS ?)

That likely is the default behavior in the vbios, not a lot you can do about it without risking bricking the card… Well, you could disconnect the fan from the GPU header and put it into the motherboard, then control the fan speed in software. Sitting at the UEFI shell, the load will be light enough that the low default speed would be fine, and after that it’d be under software control.

That said, a large part of the problem is the blower cooler in the first place (and coolers on AMD cards in general, even the R7 stock fans were poor). Personally, I wouldn’t buy a reference card unless I plan to put a water block on it. Would be nice if any of the partner models came pre-installed with water blocks, but ah well.

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Ugh, good news and bad news. I figured out the CPU idle issue; when I moved to the new case I forgot to make sure the input and output were the correct way around. Funny thing, microchannel blocks don’t like running backwards. Bad news is I managed to strip a wire to the pump without noticing and fried one of the 2 pump headers on the motherboard. Good thing there’s a spare.

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this is a MUST for ME because i’d rather have a louder (@ full-load) fan AND be able to immediately exhaust the massive heat during a few-hours renders than dissipate it into the case and have my case-fans take it out.

but i can agree that the stock-blower implementation could use some TLC from AMD (maybe just the pro cards if that’s too much RND …) . i’d rather they implemented a sort of turbo boost based on max-heat like nVidia does in the proprietary-driver … that being said pro cards usually run cooler than their gaming counterparts because they “win” the silicon-lottery every time … :upside_down_face:

by the way … i don’t think i’ll bother changing my firewall on Debian 10, but … what is the most advanced powerful software firewall/gui for Gentoo ?

I tend to be of the mindset that you should run on a secure network; the computer firewall is a last line of defense. So my primary firewall is the one in OpenWRT on the router. I don’t have a GUI firewall manager program on the desktop, if I need to do something I usually call iptables directly.

That said, fail2ban is worth a mention. It’s not a GUI program, but it has support for most things out of the box. It watches access logs (ssh, apache/nginx, sendmail, and so on), and will auto-ban IP addresses which access unapproved things (bad password, looking for myphpadmin, or similar), with configurable duration. It does decently well at keeping a lid on the amount of attackers hitting my ssh port.

Another neat trick is to put your external ssh port somewhere non-standard, then put a listener on port 22, ban anyone that tries to talk to it.

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