this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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Linux Gaming

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How is powerplans/performance modes handled in laptops running linux compared to windows? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I want to buy a gaming laptop from mainstream brands like asus, msi, hp. I wish to install linux for gaming.

On windows we do have softwares like armoury crate, omen centre etc to control performance profiles. On windows it is impossible to get peak performance without installing those softwares and bios options are usually limited

How are these things handled in linux? Without dedicated software, can the OS( not bios) achieve peak performance with powershell/terminal?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I believe the platform power profiles are standard nowadays and coded in the bios, so Linux should have access to them just like Windows does. You can use the powerprofilesctl command to list and change power profiles. Gnome also has a Power Mode switcher on the top menu, it's the same thing.

I can talk of my experience with the 2021 Asus ROG Strix G15, I have 3 power profiles:

  • performance: Power limits to max; Aggressive fan curve with speed limit to max. Generally loud fans. I need this to play demanding games in the summer.
  • balanced: Power limits to max; Moderate fan curve with a medium limit. Great perf (under sane ambient temp), while not too loud.
  • power-saver: Lowered power limits; Quiet fans.

Those seem to correlate exactly with the power profiles in Armoury Crate: Turbo, Balanced and Silent respectively. I don't think there's any performance being left on the table.

Gaming laptops with AMD CPU + AMD dGPU are a great suit for Linux gaming.

Also, AMD GPUs benefit a lot from undervolting, which is safe to do. It's free performance. I've made a simple systemd service to keep the undervolt always active: https://codeberg.org/jntesteves/amdgpu-tune

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What do you mean by peak performance? I've installed Manjaro GNOME on my Asus Tuf Gaming laptop and am able to play Steam games with good performance. I set the power saving mode in GNOME settings to minimal, that's all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I usually uninstall armory crate and other manufacturer bloat from gaming laptop while using windows and i use high performance power plan on windows. But armoury crate unclocks better high performance modes delivering more power to cpu. Since you have no armoury crate/msi centre on linux you will never know the performance you are leaving behind. Correct me if i am wrong.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Our asus-linux community has implemented support for most of the ASUS ROG models. There's some TUF support available AFAIK but the focus was mostly on the ROG machines.

Check out asus-linux.org for the software details, there are binary repos available for Fedora and Arch.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

high performance power plan

You can at least do this by using the performance CPU governor although there is a fair amount of nuance here in that how it's implemented depends on the CPU and a few other things. In general, it's a safe starting point, however.

If armoury crate is a CPU overclocking utility, than that is another matter. There is some CPU overclocking support on Linux, although I'm mostly familiar with AMD CPUs and this support differs by manufacturer. This page isn't a bad starting point if you use an AMD CPU.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

That just sounds like overclocking to me