Surprising Power Consumption Of Ubuntu 11.04 vs. Windows 7

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Surprising Power Consumption Of Ubuntu 11.04 vs. Windows 7

After recently tracking down the major Linux kernel power regression that's present for a vast number of mobile users in Fedora 15, Ubuntu 11.04, and other recent Linux distributions shipping the 2.6.38+ kernel, the sights were turned to see how the power management of Ubuntu 11.04 compares to that of Windows 7 Professional Service Pack 1. In this article are the power consumption results of Ubuntu 11.04 compared directly to Windows 7 Professional 1 on several different systems with distinct notebook and desktop / workstation configurations.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=16189

[droidhacker]

How is this surprising?
You're surprised that the platform that has more developers participating in its development actually performs better and uses less power than the junk MS has been spewing?

[down1]

The Catalyst Linux driver actually produced a higher frame-rate than the Windows driver.

Well that needs to be framed somewhere

[deanjo]

How is this surprising?
You're surprised that the platform that has more developers participating in its development actually performs better and uses less power than the junk MS has been spewing?

All this shows is that Linux with blobs is on par with windows.

[droidhacker]

All this shows is that Linux with blobs is on par with windows.

No, it shows that Linux is FASTER and USES LESS POWER than wondoze **WITH THE SAME BLOBS**, which means that **OVERALL** Linux is FASTER and USES LESS POWER than wondoze.

[Drago]

No, it shows that Linux is FASTER and USES LESS POWER than wondoze **WITH THE SAME BLOBS**, which means that **OVERALL** Linux is FASTER and USES LESS POWER than wondoze.

On top of that, it needs all Anti-<Shit> software that consumes additional power.

[Cyborg16]

Stop making stupid generalisations. The interesting cases are where the two operating systems diverge significantly, such as in flash video playback.

Michael, I presume you didn't use your "pcie_aspm=force" workaround on the T61? The idle power usage on that platform is slightly (but significantly) higher than on windows; it would be interesting to see how much lower the ubuntu power usage is with this change — would it even beat windows power usage?

[froyo]

Michael please keep up the great work! I am seriously considering a Premium membership!

[jnfbatista]

...

Michael, I presume you didn't use your "pcie_aspm=force" workaround on the T61? The idle power usage on that platform is slightly (but significantly) higher than on windows; it would be interesting to see how much lower the ubuntu power usage is with this change — would it even beat windows power usage?

I'm with Cyborg16, it would be really cool to see the difference the workaround makes!

Oh, and really great work!

[deanjo]

No, it shows that Linux is FASTER and USES LESS POWER than wondoze **WITH THE SAME BLOBS**, which means that **OVERALL** Linux is FASTER and USES LESS POWER than wondoze.

No it shows that Linux is slower (the only test that it was faster in was on the opteron system).

Net difference is less then 1% in power consumption which is within a reasonable margin of error meaning that it is on par.