Ubuntu 19.10 To 21.10: AMD Zen 2 + Radeon Performance On Linux Over Two Years

[Vistaus]

skeevy420 That's odd, 'cause it does say

modprobe: FATAL: Module cpufreq_schedutil not found in directory /lib/modules/5.14.11-xanmod1-edge

and it doesn't show up in cpupower frequency-info either.

[skeevy420]

Since İ've been on the lookout for a newer generation CPU, İ've been wondering as well whether 'schedutil' is a better fit for these low base clocks & high boost clocks CPUs.
İf You could compare to the 'performance' governor, that would be great!
(Although results will probably change once the "AMD-PSTATE" CPU driver lands in mainline kernels.)

Right now I'm in the process of downloading all the tests used in the article and then I'm going to run them with ondemand, performance, and schedutil over the next couple of nights as I sleep on my R5 4650G system. I'm doing it that way since it took Michael ~7hrs per run with twice as many Zen 2 cores...though I have twice the memory, a crappier GPU, probably a slower SSD, Plasma on Xorg, Arch with a Zen2 pf kernel...totally an apples to apples comparison with Ubuntu 20.11.

I only have the one system so I have to use it by day and benchmark it by night. I really hope it doesn't scale into multiple 14 hour runs

Vistaus No idea. I don't run XanMod (but a quick glance at their patches didn't show anything that would remove it and their config shows it enabled). I use the Zen 2 build of linux-pf from this repository and it has schedutil.

[castlefox]

I wonder if there would be a similar performance increase with my Ryzen 1 CPU.

[Vistaus]

Nice. Especially since Schedutil was used with 21.10. Anecdotally, with games I tended to have better results (fps, frame time, feels) with Performance and OnDemand. On my old Xeons I found that Schedutil was more keen to both hold it lower and ramp it lower faster than OnDemand (acting more like Conservative). Since my Zen 2 desktop has adequate cooling one of my first tweaks is to install cpupower and switch to Performance. I wonder if that's less or not necessary now?

Schedutil doesn't seem to be available on my system (Deepin 20). Is that because I'm running the XanMod kernel?

[M@GOid]

Just curious, where we can look at performance for M$ Windows?

Thanks.

Reviewers discovered it first, but AMD had acknowledge the issue themselves:

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/pa-400

[Linuxxx]

Because of xanmod the default scheduler is performance. It's nice of course but uses a few Watt more than necessary for my workflow so I made a systemd service which sets all governors to ondemand, which keeps the cores at a lower frequency when not much is going on but still ramps them up when necessary.
That way the machine cools a bit faster when work is done as it idles lower and therefore colder while the fans do their work.
Overall it's probably a pretty neglectible effect but on a Laptop it matters to me because the fans will come to a full stop when it's cold enough (below 35°C, which is pretty low, with a hysteresis starting them again at 40°C, which is also very low) so I try to "race to cool" to get back silence.

Just curious:
Why 'ondemand' and not 'schedutil'?

İ believe part of the improvements we see in this round of benchmarking also have to do with the switch of the CPU governors.

İf You too could do a similar comparison by means of observation, that would be similarly great!

[Linuxxx]

Nice. Especially since Schedutil was used with 21.10. Anecdotally, with games I tended to have better results (fps, frame time, feels) with Performance and OnDemand. On my old Xeons I found that Schedutil was more keen to both hold it lower and ramp it lower faster than OnDemand (acting more like Conservative). Since my Zen 2 desktop has adequate cooling one of my first tweaks is to install cpupower and switch to Performance. I wonder if that's less or not necessary now?

Since İ've been on the lookout for a newer generation CPU, İ've been wondering as well whether 'schedutil' is a better fit for these low base clocks & high boost clocks CPUs.
İf You could compare to the 'performance' governor, that would be great!
(Although results will probably change once the "AMD-PSTATE" CPU driver lands in mainline kernels.)

[RedEyed]

How nice that, contrary to MS Windows 11, AMD performance goes UP on the new Linux OS releases.

Just curious, where we can look at performance for M$ Windows?

Thanks.

[M@GOid]

How nice that, contrary to MS Windows 11, AMD performance goes UP on the new Linux OS releases.

[reba]

Nice. Especially since Schedutil was used with 21.10. Anecdotally, with games I tended to have better results (fps, frame time, feels) with Performance and OnDemand. On my old Xeons I found that Schedutil was more keen to both hold it lower and ramp it lower faster than OnDemand (acting more like Conservative). Since my Zen 2 desktop has adequate cooling one of my first tweaks is to install cpupower and switch to Performance. I wonder if that's less or not necessary now?

Because of xanmod the default scheduler is performance. It's nice of course but uses a few Watt more than necessary for my workflow so I made a systemd service which sets all governors to ondemand, which keeps the cores at a lower frequency when not much is going on but still ramps them up when necessary.
That way the machine cools a bit faster when work is done as it idles lower and therefore colder while the fans do their work.
Overall it's probably a pretty neglectible effect but on a Laptop it matters to me because the fans will come to a full stop when it's cold enough (below 35°C, which is pretty low, with a hysteresis starting them again at 40°C, which is also very low) so I try to "race to cool" to get back silence.