@ BoDun

Gamers will want to use the performance profile on their desktop machines. Many others will, too.

Do you mind telling why the profile should not be performance by default, in your case?

Cheers,
Marja

Keywords: (none) => NEEDINFO

This have been debated before, see: bug 14584, and also search forum:
https://forums.mageia.org/en/search.php?keywords=frequency+scaling

I have the same original content in /etc/sysconfig/cpupower (performance and ondemand) and frequency varies on demand here on my intel i7.

I may have done other system edits long time ago but forgot - this is an old install.

What CPU and chipset do you have?

CC: (none) => fri

(In reply to Marja van Waes from comment #1)
> @ BoDun
> 
> Gamers will want to use the performance profile on their desktop machines.
> Many others will, too.
> 
> Do you mind telling why the profile should not be performance by default, in
> your case?
> 
> Cheers,
> Marja

I see, but not all users is gamers
and lot of hardware use battary, notebooks, netbooks
and use perfomance, battary charge fast sit down
maybe need program, for graphics edited current profile, and restart daemon cpupower?

(In reply to Morgan Leijström from comment #2)
> This have been debated before, see: bug 14584, and also search forum:
> https://forums.mageia.org/en/search.php?keywords=frequency+scaling
> 
> I have the same original content in /etc/sysconfig/cpupower (performance and
> ondemand) and frequency varies on demand here on my intel i7.
> 
> I may have done other system edits long time ago but forgot - this is an old
> install.
> 
> What CPU and chipset do you have?

One pc is intel i3 4130
And notebook, cpu t5750
And pc intel e5200

with current generation CPUs, really the /only/ ones wanting to use performance all the time is gamers (and potentially musicians, but there latency requirements are easily covered by lower performance states already, that stuff doesn't need lots of cpu cycles).

Furthermore there is no "ondemand" governor with intel_pstate anymore, there's only powersave and performance.

And powersave (for intel_pstate) doesn't mean the CPU won't use all available frequencies / it won't be clamped to lowest frequency.

It would be fine if mageia just defaulted to performance when plugged in / on AC, and would use powersave when running on battery - but mageia isn't setup to switch between the two, at least not in a default install.

Furthermore there would be another setting that can be used to further tweak the processor's state handling, namely the energy_performance_preference, which allows to purely set to "performance" (the default here, again unfortunately no matter whether on battery or plugged in) - or "power", or something in between ("balance_performance" and "balance_power"). 

#####
so to sum up:
* the package doesn't deal with different processors correctly,
  namely sandy bridge and later intel processors (since 2011)
  → those only have powersave and performance governors
    (which could be fine-tuned via sysfs, but that's not necessary)
  → even when not using pstate driver but old cpufreq based handling,
    ondemand is considered to be way more inefficient/too slow to properly
    switch the state on the current processors that the performance
    mode would be more power efficient
* there's no automatic switching based on whether the machine is
  running on battery or on AC
* arguably more people are using Mageia on their laptops or on desktop
  systems on which they typically don't play games, but doing productivity
  work, watching youtube or similar stuff where the CPUs are not under
  heavy load most of the time/where milliseconds don't matter.
  → people having high performance requirements are more likely to tweak
    their configuration anyway, so having a different default will be no
    hurdle for them (e.g. like jack users will have to configure their user
    to be in realtime group)

proposed solution:
* default to powersave
* alternatively use alternatives system and have "laptop/powersave" and
  "gamer/performance" options that default to performance or powersave
  respectively - ideally installation should pick the laptop/powersave one
  when the system has a battery
* alternatively add autoswitching between the two depending on whether hooked
  up to powersupply or running from battery

Keywords: NEEDINFO => (none)
CC: (none) => lohmaier+mageia

I guess it doesn't hurt to back up my claims with some numbers.
Compiling LibreOffice with filled ccache (on a i7-8550U system with a firecuda drive (spinning 5200rpm drive with builtin 8GB SSD cache) on an otherwise mostly idle system (couple browsertabs open and irc client that receives notification and similar, but no other active usage):

* powersave governor (kernel default, energy_performance_preference=balance_performance)
  real    69m26,907s
* performance governor:
  real    66m6,779s

so a mere three minute difference, where the effects could also likely be due to disk-cache or system background tasks like mdkapplet checking for updates or msec/similar.

Second, more CPU heavy test on same system: Compiling LibreOffice with empty ccache. This time built with performance first, then switched to powersave and did the same thing again:

* performance governor
  real    216m3,491s
* powersave governor
  real    211m26,612s

yes, this time the build took a couple minutes less time with the powersave governor, again hinting that there is no reason to user performance governor.

The benefits of using powersave governor come into play when the system is not working hard: Much quieter system, as the fans don't need to spin up as frequently, and also cooler system overall and longer battery live.

Have you measured the power and temperature? On my laptop, with an i7-3630, I see no difference between performance and powersave. Yes, the clock frequencies drop, but the battery drain reported by powertop and the CPU temperature stay the same. And just running a web browser displaying a non-static page is enough to push the CPU frequencies back up.

With modern Intel CPUs, the biggest impact on power is the proportion of time the CPU stays in the C7 state. If you lower the CPU frequency, it will increase the time it is out of that state.

CC: (none) => mageia

If there was a noticable difference on an idle system, then the whole powermanagement would be bonkers.
Of course you only see a difference when you put some load on the system, and then it is very apparent that temperature stays lower (as the fans don't need to start to spin up) - and while there's debate what is more efficient in terms of battery life (get stuff done quick to be able to the lowest power mode quicker or use a mid-level mode for longer) - it is a lot more pleasing to have a quieter/cooler system where fans run at constant low speed than one where the fans keep ramping up and back down.

So it doesn't change much for extremes (fully idle or fully loaded), as in fully idle both modes will enter low power modes, and in fully loaded both will very likely be thermal-throttled - but even more so in the in-between case, like for example when watching high-res movies, there it is sufficient to decode and render the video at a little above the target framerate, it is not necessary to decode as fast as possible and then sit and rolling thumbs. Thermals and resulting noise levels are better when in powersave governor mode. Same when doing office work.

And as said those who need fast response/low latency (audio production or gaming) are tweaking their systems anyway, so changing the governor is easier for them than for the regular user.

Just adding one voice: on my laptop (ultrabook with i7 / intel_pstate driver), I absolutely must change the governor to powersave because the performance governor results in an awful amount of chip noise, presumably due to some high-frequency power switching. It turns out that it is silenced by the powersave governor, and the performance stays good. More generally I agree that people who really need the performance governor are the ones who tune their system anyway.

CC: (none) => heninj

Both KDE Plasma and Gnome have a power management widget.
That is something to consider.

CC: (none) => rihoward1

Ignore my above comment 10 as on my system they do not offer any cpu scaling.

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Resolution: (none) => OLD
Status: NEW => RESOLVED
CC: (none) => ouaurelien