Linux's P-State Performance Governor Shows Unexpectedly Big Boosts For The Intel Core i9-11900K

In the case of compiling the Linux kernel, switching to the performance governor shaved off six seconds off the kernel build time...

During all of these benchmark runs the Phoronix Test Suite was monitoring the peak CPU frequency every second for what was the maximum frequency found on any of the cores as exposed under Linux via the P-State sysfs interface. In the case of the kernel build process, the powersave governor was driving the i9-11900K only up to 4.9GHz. The performance governor meanwhile kept the peak CPU frequency at least at 4.9GHz but did hit 5.0~5.3GHz as rated during the build process.

The performance governor though led to an average CPU power draw of 243 Watts compared to 152 Watts with powersave... A nearly 60% increase in power consumption. The peak power consumption was 225 Watts with powersave and 345 Watts with the performance governor. All of the CPU power consumption readings were consistently done by the Phoronix Test Suite via the exposed Intel RAPL interfaces on Linux.

The CPU temperature started out the same but under load for compiling the Linux kernel led to a 20 degree higher temperature.

This outcome was similar across the various code compilation benchmarks...