this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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How is powerplans/performance modes handled in laptops running linux compared to windows? (self.linux_gaming)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by caustictrap to c/linux_gaming
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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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[–] jntesteves 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's very good - in some cases better than Windows. I have a MSI gaming laptop. The battery lifedin longer on linux compared to Windows.

With custom scripts you can control fan speed. However... I have a intel/nVidia card on KDE with wayland and it is hell. Nothing works as expected, so I can't tell about gaming in itself.

For other tasks, it works really well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm lucky that I don't need long battery life, I'm always plugged in for gaming, so I have set the Nvidia GPU in Dedicated mode. I suspect not having both (optimus or prime) have eliminated a lot of issues, it works well with Wayland and Plasma and games like BG3 and Guildwars2 under Proton+Xwayland.

Actually it's not too bad on the battery when not gaming, despite always running NVidia.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I have to ask... on KDE wayland, how do you set it to dedicated mode ?

[–] caustictrap 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

More battery life means the cpu is power limited compared to windows + armoury crate performance mode?

[–] Spur4383 4 points 1 year ago

Or that the CPU is not doing needles add servings.

[–] PeachMan 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It probably means that there are fewer useless background processes eating up your battery

If you're asking about gaming performance on Linux, then the answer is that it depends on the game. Some run better on Linux (Cyberpunk made headlines recently) and some run worse.

Edit: ah, you're asking any Armory Crate because they have the performance modes. That's just overclocking. You can do that on Linux, but it won't be as easy as using Armory Crate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

No, I have also found that my processes run faster on Linux than on Windows. I don't know what is armoury crate but from the way you're talking about it it manages CPU modes.

Whatever you do in Windows, you can in Linux (almost). But it is sometimes harder, sometimes simpler.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year 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.

[–] caustictrap 1 points 1 year 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.

[–] seaQueue 1 points 1 year 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 1 year 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.