Testing The New ASUS Platform Profile Support In Linux 5.15

With the in-development Linux 5.15 kernel there is now support for ACPI Platform Profiles on supported ASUS laptops. This ASUS laptop platform profile support joins the likes of HP, Dell, and Lenovo laptops already having this support exposed under Linux that allows users to control their power/performance preference. Here are some tests with the ASUS ROG Strix G15 AMD Advantage laptop with the platform profile options under Linux 5.15.

The ASUS-WMI driver with Linux 5.15 exposes the ACPI Platform Profile support of the hardware/firmware of supported laptops. Like with the ACPI Platform Profile support from other vendors, the control is exposed at /sys/firmware/acpi/platform_profile where users can write their supported preference for affecting the thermal/power behavior of the laptop. With GNOME 41 and KDE Plasma 5.23 there is the initial Platform Profile integration at the desktop level for easy UI-based controls around it. It's only been through the past number of kernel releases this year that the ACPI Platform Profile support has begun to be exposed under Linux and in turn now the desktop environments making it easier to manage.

The ASUS ROG Strix G15 AMD Advantage laptop was used for testing this Linux 5.15 feature. The ROG Strix G15 AMD Advantage is powered by the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX flagship Zen 3 mobile processor. With Linux 5.15 this platform profile support was exposed and working fine. The supported profiles were quiet, balanced, and performance. The default profile is the "balanced" mode.

Curious about the impact of this functionality on the laptop, I ran a series of benchmarks for each of these ACPI Platform Profile modes looking at the raw performance and various power/thermal metrics during the benchmarking process.