The Best Features Of The Linux 4.18 Kernel

[rstrube]

Hey! How did you undervolt your XPS on linux. tbh I haven't really looked into it all that much but it is comforting to know someone has pulled it off on the same laptop that I have.

What are your values and how much of a difference has it made to the battery?

Hey!

I'm using a program called iuvolt (https://github.com/tiziw/iuvolt). You can set it up as a systemd service so it runs at boot.

Currently I'm using the following values:

-135mv Core offset
-75mv GPU offset (Intel iGPU)
-135mv Cache offset

I haven't conducted extensive battery tests, but my temperatures have dropped between 8 and 10 C. I used to get thermal throttling when running intensive operations, but not anymore. The CPU will get up to 95C when all cores are 100%, but the speed stays at 3.7GHz. At idle I'm about 10C cooler.

[rstrube]

Why did you have to rebuild the initramfs? Does it use the Intel GPU if you just boot the 4.18 kernel normally? Which distro is this?

1. I'm using Ubuntu 18.04.1
2. The way that I initially set things up was as follows:
- Using UKUU (Ubuntu Kernel Ugrade Utility) I installed the 4.18-rcx kernel
- I downloaded the latest uCode from the linux-firmware git repo and copied the files to /lib/firmware/amdgpu/. (vegam*.bin)
- I then rebuilt the intiramfs so that the uCode would be included in the initramfs for that specific kernel.

I suppose I could have put the uCode in place first, and then installed the 4.18-rcx kernel - which would have automatically included the uCode in the initramfs. In fact with each successive rc release I have not had to rebuild the initramfs - it was just for the first 4.18-rc release I installed (which was rc2 I believe).

3. In'm not sure what would happen if you used 4.18 without having the updated uCode in place. My experience with the default 4.15 kernel (for Ubuntu) is that it only saw the Intel iGPU.