Is PowerTop / TLP Still Useful To Save Power On Linux Laptops?

When using the ASUS UX32VDA Ivy Bridge laptop, indeed, there are still significant power savings using PowerTop or TLP compared to stock Ubuntu 17.10 or even using the Linux 4.15 Git kernel. This laptop had an average battery power draw of 12.6 Watts but dropped to 10.8 Watts when applying the PowerTop optimizations. The minimum and peak power usage was also ~2 Watts lower.

And under load, the power use remained lower with TLP and PowerTop. The average battery power use under load was 28.1~29.5 Watts but dropped to 26.4~27.5 Watts with the power-saving optimizations while the peak power use also dropped from 37~38 Watts down to 35~36 Watts.

All those details via this OpenBenchmarking.org result file.

Long story short, using PowerTop or TLP still appears to have significant power-savings benefits compared to a stock Ubuntu Linux installation.