Ondemand vs. Performance CPU Governing For AMD FX CPUs On Linux 3.17

Written by Michael Larabel in Processors on 2 September 2014 at 12:00 AM EDT. Page 4 of 4. 17 Comments.
AMD FX-9590 CPU Governors Ubuntu
AMD FX-9590 CPU Governors Ubuntu
AMD FX-9590 CPU Governors Ubuntu
AMD FX-9590 CPU Governors Ubuntu

With our many other common Linux CPU benchmarks, again, there was no real difference in the performance result between the ondemand and performance governors of CPUfreq for the AMD FX-Series Vishera CPU.

Here's a look at the CPU temperature and system power graphs that span all of the benchmarks used in this article.

AMD FX-9590 CPU Governors Ubuntu

The CPU temperature was largely the same between the two governors when being stressed with the same workloads, except when starting out and encountering the difference with Xonotic. (General note: it looks like AMD's thermal driver on Linux 3.17 is reporting some slightly bogus numbers for some CPU readings... As good as the water cooling setup is, the FX-9590 220 Watt CPU isn't reaching any temps close to 1 Celsius.)

AMD FX-9590 CPU Governors Ubuntu

The system power consumption was monitored via the Phoronix Test Suite with a WattsUp USB Pro power meter.

Aside from the Xonotic gaming test, the rest of the results in comparing CPUfreq performance and ondemand governors showed no performance difference nor any real difference in the AC system power consumption. Just to reiterate, AMD CPUs with CPUFreq on modern kernels generally default to ondemand by default.

Feel free to run your own benchmarks using the Phoronix Test Suite and share your results via OpenBenchmarking.org. The result file containing our data is 1409011-LI-AMDFX959027.

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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.