Intel Ivy Bridge Is Okay On Linux Power Usage

The power consumption when upgrading from the Linux 3.4 to 3.5 kernel also went unchanged when the Intel HD 4000 graphics were being utilized in Xonotic. The Linux 3.2 kernel results are unavailable since the Intel DRM driver on Linux 3.2 was being unstable for this test.

When looking at the overall results of the system power consumption for these results plus various other Phoronix Test Suite test profiles and some idling points between them, there really is not much change for the Core i7 3770K Ivy Bridge system's power consumption between Linux 3.2 and Linux 3.5. This is good to see, though further performance/power enhancements are always welcome. We may see a small reduction in the Ivy Bridge processor power consumption in the Linux 3.6 kernel thanks to the Intel CPU Idle driver now supporting IVB, but those results will be saved for another article.

More Linux power consumption benchmarks will be published in early August for looking at possible Linux kernel power regressions.