Originally posted by shmerl
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The ideal from a power consumption perspective is to "race to idle" at the maximum performance per Joule your chip can run at, and then power gate into a low power state. Performance gives you a close approximation to this, because the highest frequency the chip can run at right now is usually pretty close to the optimal power consumption frequency, whereas running at a lower frequency lowers energy use, but lowers performance by more than it lowers energy use.
In theory, the AMD P-state driver can do better by tracking the current optimal power consumption frequency, and stick to that - so where performance might choose 3.2 GHz, P-state might choose 3.1 GHz.
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