New Intel Linux Graphics Driver Patches Allow Tuning For Up To 10~15% Better Performance

[phoronix]

Phoronix: New Intel Linux Graphics Driver Patches Allow Tuning For Up To 10~15% Better Performance

After profiling and raising an issue by Google's Chrome OS engineers, there is a set of "request for comments" patches out today for the Intel Linux graphics driver that can provide 10~15% better performance when operating in the tuned mode...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-RPS-Threshold-Linux-Tune

[zexelon]

If you look at the trend of performance increases in the Intel graphics stack over the last year its starting to look like they actually made viable GPU hardware and are finally getting the drivers in order!

Its really good to see... I really hope their graphics division can make it through the "valley of division death" at Intel over the next few years. If they can, we will finally have the third player in the GPU market across the market segments.

[clapbr]

dynamic clocks for GPU, CPU and PCIe are something I've NEVER ever got an smooth enough experience no matter how strong the hardware is, OS or vendor, it's annoying and probably the only reason stuff like Feral's gamemode and Windows's own game mode exists.

You either have a laptop and have to constantly care about power management or a desktop on which power management hinders performance when dynamic should be more aggressive towards boosting. In the desktop case I usually stop caring about power and temps and going on 24/7 max clocks but recently upgrading from a ryzen 2600+rx580 to the 13700k+3090 which consumes like 5x more watts it becomes a hard choice and requires manual power plan tuning depending on load

[Linuxxx]

dynamic clocks for GPU, CPU and PCIe are something I've NEVER ever got an smooth enough experience no matter how strong the hardware is, OS or vendor, it's annoying and probably the only reason stuff like Feral's gamemode and Windows's own game mode exists.

You either have a laptop and have to constantly care about power management or a desktop on which power management hinders performance when dynamic should be more aggressive towards boosting. In the desktop case I usually stop caring about power and temps and going on 24/7 max clocks but recently upgrading from a ryzen 2600+rx580 to the 13700k+3090 which consumes like 5x more watts it becomes a hard choice and requires manual power plan tuning depending on load

Personally, I've found the automatic reclocking behavior of nVidia's GPUs better than AMD's; plus, forcing the highest power-state is really easy via the nvidia-setting GUI, as you surely know already.

And since you own an Intel CPU now, forcing the maximum energy efficiency mode is possible with the following command:

sudo cpupower set --perf-bias 15

[clapbr]

Personally, I've found the automatic reclocking behavior of nVidia's GPUs better than AMD's; plus, forcing the highest power-state is really easy via the nvidia-setting GUI, as you surely know already.

And since you own an Intel CPU now, forcing the maximum energy efficiency mode is possible with the following command:

sudo cpupower set --perf-bias 15

yeah my problems are almost always the same with dynamic, it stays on low clocks for too long and usually either clocks up too much to maximum with variance in frametimes and input lag OR just misses deadlines and doesnt clock up at all when it should've done it. On my 3090 running at max perf 24/7 is a terrible idea (80-120w on idle) but just setting it manually to the same max clocks and upping the minimum clocks a little bit is enough for good enough responsiveness on transient/irregular loads like web browsing and media playing, while idling at like 60w, which is okayish but still wasteful of course if it's not doing any work at all.

For intel the scheduler on latest Linux kernels is great enough I don't need to tune much beyond what you suggested (--perf-bias 15). On Windows 11 it's chaotic and depends on some power plan fiddling because the constant parking/unparking at low loads feels sluggish at times.

Funnily the system flies at medium/high loads when nothing is being constantly reclocked at a fine granularity.

[stiiixy]

Wasn't dtrace implented to track this kind of thing? Or did it not progress to the lower levels of graphics? I only recall it as a Sun reimplementation of S-trace, tracking most corners of the kernel, but Sun was focussed elsewhere's, of course.

Genuinely curious question. Metrics to me should be built in to all aspects of software, but there's an obvious limit (what am I measuring in my hello world!) and graphical efforts are the most jiggly of squiggly targets with regards to hardware.

[tildearrow]

Typo:

The only downside with these current patches are that they work only for non-GuC based platforms... So the latest Alder/Raptor Lake notebooks as well as Intel DG2/Alchemist discrete graphics currently don't aren't able to make use of this tuning option.