Notebook power management

sox · 01-10-2019, 11:18 AM

Hello,
I have kubuntu 18.10 and big problem with power management. Everything is fine till notebook is on ac, when ac is unplugged performance sucks:/ Every browser works slow, videos on youtube are freezeeing every few sec but sound is ok. Ive installed tlp but improvement isnt so good as i expected. When i set up best performance is ok till battery isnt below ~70%, when i set up always ac plan battery is draining and performance isnt good. Its not a hardware problem, previously i had debian + kde and everything was perfect, on windows also is good. Generaly im little bit dissapointed, even startup time is about 20-25 sec, windows/debian about 15sec.
What can and should i do?

Brains · 01-10-2019, 02:33 PM

What does Kubuntu have over Debian KDE?
I've never tried Kubuntu, but do have Ubuntu and Debian testing KDE, don't like Ubuntu.
If you're not hung on KDE, perhaps LMDE might work better. It's kind of funny to think Ubuntu was derived from Debian, then other folks decided to put together a bunch of distributions derived from Ubuntu, Mint being one of them, and now Mint has a version branching away from Ubuntu and going back to Debian as it's base.

sox · 01-12-2019, 01:38 PM

But its not kde problem, just power management in ubuntu and i need tips where all these settings are

zeebra · 01-14-2019, 05:24 AM

I don't know how power management will affect performance, unless it messes with the cpu governor.

Try

Code:

cpupower frequency-info
or
cpufreq-info

see what that tells you.

sox · 01-15-2019, 10:14 AM

Code:

cpufreq-info                  
cpufrequtils 008: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2009
Report errors and bugs to cpufreq@vger.kernel.org, please.
analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
  maximum transition latency: 4294.55 ms.
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 3.50 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance, powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 3.50 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 965 MHz.
analyzing CPU 1:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 1
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 1
  maximum transition latency: 4294.55 ms.
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 3.50 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance, powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 3.50 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 893 MHz.
analyzing CPU 2:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 2
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 2
  maximum transition latency: 4294.55 ms.
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 3.50 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance, powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 3.50 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 949 MHz.
analyzing CPU 3:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 3
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 3
  maximum transition latency: 4294.55 ms.
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 3.50 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance, powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 3.50 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 924 MHz.
analyzing CPU 4:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 4
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 4
  maximum transition latency: 4294.55 ms.
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 3.50 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance, powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 3.50 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 798 MHz.
analyzing CPU 5:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 5
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 5
  maximum transition latency: 4294.55 ms.
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 3.50 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance, powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 3.50 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 934 MHz.
analyzing CPU 6:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 6
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 6
  maximum transition latency: 4294.55 ms.
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 3.50 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance, powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 3.50 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 938 MHz.
analyzing CPU 7:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 7
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 7
  maximum transition latency: 4294.55 ms.
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 3.50 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance, powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 3.50 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 821 MHz.



cpupower frequency-info
analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
  maximum transition latency:  Cannot determine or is not supported.
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 3.50 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 3.50 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency: Unable to call hardware
  current CPU frequency: 2.48 GHz (asserted by call to kernel)
  boost state support:
    Supported: yes
    Active: yes

zeebra · 01-15-2019, 01:46 PM

Yeah.

Don't use powersave, it will keep the CPU clock as low as possible, regardless of the need. Instead use "conservative" as powersave. And don't use "performance" instead use "ondemand" for performance.

Obviously a very poor choice by your distro to only include powersave and performance by default. So change it or use another distro. Probably the solution is to load the modules for conservative and ondemand CPU governors, and then select them with scaling, and then add these to whatever setting your distro use, to be the default options.

Ondemand is the default option in most GNU/Linux distroes. Personally I prefer "conservative", which is almost like "ondemand", but increase the CPU clock at a slower rate, but fast enough for long/hard tasks.

Edit. OOPS. My bad, I see that is is Intel_Pstate. I can use Intel_Pstate, but I don't use it, I prefer acpi-cpufreq instead. Not sure about intel pstate and the issues you are having, but I assume it uses powersave when not connected to power and performance when connected.

You can try acpi-cpufreq by adding the boot parameter

Code:

intel_pstate=disable

. I still think alot of what I said appplies, but intel_pstate powersave and performance is a bit different than acpi_cpufreq equivilants.