Unlocking GPU Memory Allocation on AMD Ryzen™ APU?

Table of Contents

1. Background
2. Guide
— Basic system check
— Prepare the bootable USB drive
— Boot the USB drive

Background:

I want to run stable diffusion on my Asus Zenbook S13 OLED laptop, which runs AMD Ryzen™ 7 6800U​. I would like to use the built-in Radeon 680M to run stable diffusion. However Asus locked the GPU memory allocation in BIOS setting and by default it only allocate 512MB memory to GPU. So in this guide, I will reveal how to unlock the GPU memory allocation, allocate 8GB of system memory as dedicated memory, and run stable diffusion smoothly.

UPDATE: AMD fixes memory problem in Linux Kernel 6.9.9+. By upgrading the kernel I no longer need to allocate GPU memory in BIOS and no longer need to install AMD Driver. Here is the procedure for installing Linux Kernel 6.9.9+ on Ubuntu 24.04. If you already use the BIOS modification method then please boot the system using the same USB Drive and set UMA Mode back to AUTO. The script below would install the latest kernel on Ubuntu 24.04:

# Install Add Zabbly Repository key
sudo wget -O - https://pkgs.zabbly.com/key.asc |sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/zabbly.asc

# Setup the repository via single command
sh -c 'cat <<EOF > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zabbly-kernel-stable.sources
Enabled: yes
Types: deb
URIs: https://pkgs.zabbly.com/kernel/stable
Suites: $(. /etc/os-release && echo ${VERSION_CODENAME})
Components: main
Architectures: $(dpkg --print-architecture)
Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/zabbly.asc

EOF'

# Finally, update & install the new kernel
sudo apt update
sudo apt install linux-zabbly

# REBOOT THE SYSTEM AND USE SELECT ZABBLY LINUX KERNEL in GRUB
sudo reboot

# After the system reboot, run Stable Diffusion WebUI
HSA_OVERRIDE_GFX_VERSION=10.3.0 python launch.py

Guide:

Basic system check

Before making modification, please make sure that your system could is supported and configured.

Verify

I would use the damico’s script to verify

# Install Python

# Download test script
$ wget https://gist.githubusercontent.com/damico/484f7b0a148a0c5f707054cf9c0a0533/raw/43c317bfbde626d9112d44462d815613194988e0/test-rocm.py
# Run test script
$ HSA_OVERRIDE_GFX_VERSION=10.3.0 python test-rocm.py

The following snippet is the result of my system passing the test:

Checking ROCM support...
GOOD: ROCM devices found:  2
Checking PyTorch...
GOOD: PyTorch is working fine.
Checking user groups...
GOOD: The user winston is in RENDER and VIDEO groups.
GOOD: PyTorch ROCM support found.
Testing PyTorch ROCM support...
Everything fine! You can run PyTorch code inside of: 
--->  AMD Ryzen 7 6800U with Radeon Graphics  
--->  gfx1030

If you pass the verification process. Then you could go to Prepare the bootable USB drive section directly.

Install AMD Driver on Ubuntu

# Install AMD Driver
TEMP_FOLDER="/tmp"
TEMP_DRIVER_HTML="amd-driver.html"
DISTRO_CODENAME=$(lsb_release --codename --short)

# Find the package URL from AMD website
AMD_DRIVER_URL="https://www.amd.com/en/support/linux-drivers"
URL_RESPONSE=$(wget -U 'Mozilla/5.0' -qO- ${AMD_DRIVER_URL})
AMD_DEB_URL=$(echo $URL_RESPONSE | grep -o 'https://[^ "<]*.deb' | grep $DISTRO_CODENAME | head -1)
FILENAME=$(basename $AMD_DEB_URL)

# Download and install the driver package
wget -P $TEMP_FOLDER $AMD_DEB_URL
sudo dpkg -i $TEMP_FOLDER/$FILENAME
rm $TEMP_FOLDER/$FILENAME

amdgpu-install -y --usecase=rocm

# Add user to the render group if you're using Ubuntu20.04
usermod -a -G render root

# To add future users to the video and render groups, run the following command:
echo 'ADD_EXTRA_GROUPS=1' | sudo tee -a /etc/adduser.conf
echo 'EXTRA_GROUPS=video' | sudo tee -a /etc/adduser.conf
echo 'EXTRA_GROUPS=render' | sudo tee -a /etc/adduser.conf

Install/Update PyTorch

This is the script for installing PyTorch 2.2.1. Please check their website for latest version

# Install PyTorch
pip3 install torch torchvision torchaudio --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/rocm5.7

After successfully install AMD Driver and PyTorch installation, please run the verification script again.

Prepare the bootable USB drive

• Prepare an empty USB thumb drive with at least 128MB, plug the USB drive to your laptop
• Download UniversalAMDFormBrowser
• Download Rufus
  Go to official page, go to download section and download the Portable version

Rufus Official Page, download the Portable version

• Format USB Drive
  - Open Rufus
  - Select the USB Drive
  - In Boot selection, select FreeDOS
  - Press Start
  - Close Rufus after the format process is finished

Rufus Page

• In file explorer, open UniversalAMDFormBrowser.zip and extract everything to USB drive

Your bootable USB drive is now ready

Boot the USB drive

• Reboot your system and go to BIOS
• Go to Boot menu and select USB Drive as the first boot device. Then you should be able to boot to UniversalAMDFormBrowser
• Go to Device Manager→AMD CBS→NBIO Common Option→GFX Configuration
  - In Integrated Graphics Controller, select Forces
  - In UMA Mode, select UMA_SPECIFIED
  - In UMA Frame Buffer Size, select your desired VRAM value (8G for Stable Diffusion)
  - Press F10 to save your settings

GFX Configuration in UniversalAMDFormBrowser

• Press Esc several times to go back to the main menu
• Select Continue to reboot your laptop