Ice Lake GPU underperforming? Put it in powersave mode. Wait, what?:
Back in December, Linux users were starting to notice that Ice Lake-equipped laptops were getting better framerates in powersave mode than in performance mode. This Tuesday, Intel developer Francisco Jerez released a patchset to address the conundrum. Jerez begins by noting the fact that if your system bottleneck is I/O, boosting CPU performance won't help—the CPU can't process more data if the I/O subsystem isn't providing it fast enough.
"In IO-bound scenarios (by definition) the throughput of the system doesn't improve with increasing CPU frequency beyond the threshold value at which the IO device becomes the bottleneck."
Jerez goes on to note that pointlessly boosting the CPU into turbo frequencies when there's no additional data for it to process doesn't just hurt power efficiency. In the case of laptop designs, there's typically no room for desktop- or server-style "overengineering"—you've got limited space as well as limited power. This means, among other things, that there's only so much cooling to go around.
"With the current governors [...] the CPU frequency tends to oscillate with the load, often with an amplitude far into the turbo range, leading to severely reduced energy efficiency."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2020, @03:53AM (1 child)
For $US5000 one could buy a nice water cooled gaming tower, a wall mounted 4K LED display AND some nice furniture for one's dorm!
First world problems.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 16 2020, @04:01AM
Uh-huh. But, you're not carrying that water cooled tower around in a taxi, on a bus, or most likely, not in your personally owned vehicle. And, relatively few people living in a dorm have that kind of money to throw around.