Add an option for using a different governor for integrated GPUs

This commit adds two new configuration options: igpu_desiredgov and
igpu_power_threshold which allow for a different CPU governor when the
Intel integrated GPU is under load.  This currently only applies to
Intel integrated GPUs and not AMD APUs because it uses the Intel RAPL
infrastructure for getting power information.  If on a platform that
without an Intel integrated GPU or where the kernel does not support
RAPL, the new options will be ignored and it will fall back to the old
behavior.

One of the core principals of gamemoded to date has been that, when
playing a game, we want to use the "performance" CPU governor to
increase CPU performance and prevent CPU-limiting.  However, when the
integrated GPU is under load, this can be counter-productive because the
CPU and GPU share a thermal and power budget.  By throwing the CPU
governor to "performance" game mode currently makes the CPU frequency
management far too aggressive and it burns more power than needed.  With
a discrete GPU, this is fine because the worst that happens is a bit
more fan noise.  With an integrated GPU, however, the additional power
being burned by the CPU is power not available to the GPU and this can
cause the GPU to clock down and lead to significantly worse performance.

By using the "powersave" governor instead of the "performance" governor
while the integrated GPU is under load, we can save power on the CPU
side which lets the GPU clock up higher.  On my Razer Blade Stealth 13
with an i7-1065G7, this improves the performance of "Shadow of the Tomb
Raider" by around 25-30% according to its internal benchmark mode.
This commit is contained in:
Jason Ekstrand
2019-12-16 12:32:01 -06:00
parent c1646ecdd9
commit 688373a260
4 changed files with 182 additions and 2 deletions

View File

@@ -102,6 +102,8 @@ bool config_get_inhibit_screensaver(GameModeConfig *self);
long config_get_script_timeout(GameModeConfig *self);
void config_get_default_governor(GameModeConfig *self, char governor[CONFIG_VALUE_MAX]);
void config_get_desired_governor(GameModeConfig *self, char governor[CONFIG_VALUE_MAX]);
void config_get_igpu_desired_governor(GameModeConfig *self, char governor[CONFIG_VALUE_MAX]);
float config_get_igpu_power_threshold(GameModeConfig *self);
void config_get_soft_realtime(GameModeConfig *self, char softrealtime[CONFIG_VALUE_MAX]);
long config_get_renice_value(GameModeConfig *self);
long config_get_ioprio_value(GameModeConfig *self);