GameMode Working On GPU Performance Level Tuning For Linux Gaming

Feral's GameMode daemon for dynamically tuning Linux systems while gaming and reverting to the default behavior when not running games continues to see new capabilities added.

Marc Di Luzio, who formerly worked on GameMode for Feral Interactive but then joined Unity Tech and now working on GameMode improvements in his spare time under contract with Valve, has been leading a number of the recent feature additions to this Linux game tuning daemon. Last month he was working on GPU overclocking support while the latest feature work is on allowing GPU performance level tuning support to be enabled.

This newest feature now under review allows manipulating the GPU performance levels via the PowerMizer mode with NVIDIA's binary driver and setting the AMDGPU power_dpm_force_performance_level attribute for Radeon graphics cards. This can allow keeping the respective GPUs in their optimal performance state/level while gaming and returning it to the standard default/power-saving state when not running supported Linux games. This may have some minor benefit in select titles but generally the current NVIDIA/Radeon Linux drivers tend to do a good job at power management and quickly responding to the performance needs of games and other workloads for hitting the high performance states.

Details on this addition to GameMode that's under review can be found via GameMode's GitHub.