Linux 5.13 Adds An Intel Cooling Driver To Downclock Your CPU At A Lower Threshold

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 5.13 Adds An Intel Cooling Driver To Downclock Your CPU At A Lower Threshold

Linux 5.13 is introducing the "intel_tcc_cooling" driver for helping to cool newer Intel mobile/desktop CPUs by down-clocking the processor cores when crossing a lower threshold than is set by default...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.13-Intel-Cooling-Driver

[skeevy420]

Dammit. This has nothing to do with anything.

Every time I read the word "threshold" I get earwigged from that scene in Riddick where the bad guys go "Threshold. Take us to the threshold".

And it's on YouTube

[spykes]

Seeing this news, I wonder if there is a "standard" tool on Linux to undervolt the CPU ?

[milkylainen]

It this the equivalent of an "Intel fire brigade" trying to put out a runaway thermal process by any means?

[StarterX4]

I still prefer to get a little burned having laptop on my knees rather than having 10fps in games.

[Zan Lynx]

I don't see how this is different or better than the existing Intel powercap functions.

Power IS heat. So if you limit power consumption, you limit the heat output. On Intel this power cap limits how much Turbo is used and even the iGPU frequency.

For example, on my Dell laptop I ran a full stress test and adjusted powercap until it only hit 85C instead of 95. Which turned out to be 30W instead of 45W. And I turned off thermald and other junk because it was no longer useful. Its main method of adjusting heat was ... powercap. So just set powercap.

[linuxgeex]

I still prefer to get a little burned having laptop on my knees rather than having 10fps in games.

It depends on the cooling system, the game, and how it interacts with throttling for its thermal management strategy.

Games that get you down to 10fps are pushing the hardware beyond its sustainable limits. The system may cool down a little during the less complex scenes, allowing FPS to rise both due to the lower complexity, but also because there's thermal headroom. Then a complex scene arrives and the system heats up, the throttling engages, creating a perfect storm of high complexity and lower clocks so your FPS tanks.

In those situations you're better off using thermal management techniques which prevent the deep throttling so your minimum FPS stays higher. Lower CPU clocks sooner can actually help if that prevents direly low clocks GPU clocks, especially with IGP.

You can see examples over the years on Phoronix where some games achieve higher FPS with the powersave governor. I had a friend working in Greece over the summer whose NVidia card was throttling heavily due to the 43C ambient temperature and him having all the overclocking settings enabled. In the end he got the highest median FPS by underclocking his RAM!

The highest performance is achieve by setting all the various knobs to the ideal settings. Max isn't always the best setting. More knobs = more opportunities to improve performance. This is just one more opportunity.

[idash]

I still prefer to get a little burned having laptop on my knees rather than having 10fps in games.

I actually prefer the opposite.
Not 10 FPS though, but going down to around 20 FPS (literally) is fine by me. And I'm serious, believe it or not
I'm extremely conservative when it comes to hardware. So I appreciate features like this I can definitely make use of this specific feature.

[coder]

I still prefer to get a little burned having laptop on my knees rather than having 10fps in games.

Looking at the prospect of working though another summer in a hot, upstairs room, I'll gladly trade a little bit of performance for cooler temps.

[Teggs]

Heh. 'We got our benchmarks in against AMD boys... (now it's time to be real).'