when investigating the high power usage of my PC I measured with a tool at the cord, I found that most of the power was consumed by the graphics card / GPU. Even when idling (Gnome Desktop with no apps open except the temperature monitor), it uses around 30 W according to corectrl and radeon-profiles. I know these measurements are not supposed to be accurate, but as I said, I can also see the high power consumption on my power outlet (total usage of the PC is 48 W). I have seen reports of lower than 10 W for this specific graphics chip.
The card is a Sapphire Radeon RX 570 (Polaris), I tried Kernel 5.4 and 5.10 and I use the amdgpu driver (not pro). I have a single monitor connected with a 1920x1200 resolution. I use the kernel parameters amdgpu.dc=1 amdgpu.ppfeaturemask=0xffffffff radeon.dpm=1. I also tried without the last one and without all of them with no effect.
So, I tried to activate power saving options. I tried TLPUI but that was not helpful at all, for example it deactivates dynamic power management because that is only for radeon drivers. Other options are only for radeon, too, but are activated.
I also tried corectrl and I can control the fan from there, however, all other options have no effect. Then I tried radeon-profile and I can see that whatever profile I select, the selection jumps back to 3D_FULL_SCREEN after a second or so.
Indeed, my radeon-profile says 8-10W when idle. I have a Radeon RX 470 (4GB). 30W seems too much. I don’t have any kernel parameters related with GPU. Could you be using some desktop config which is constantly offloading to the GPU some compositor tasks?
If that was the case, I should see a decrease in power usage when booting into CLI only, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
Also, I meanwhile re-installed Manjaro but the problem persists. That way I made sure that I did not mess with the drivers myself as I did nothing to the drivers since the installation.
Yes, you’re right. The power saving isn’t working as it should.
EDIT: You can take a look for any cue in the module tab of radeon profile. I think those can be toggled as kernel parameters (or possibly through the command line).
First of all, sorry for the late reply and thanks for the hint. I tried to make sense of the kernel modules myself but failed. I found ppfeaturemask but it already states all the power features are on. Do you or anyone else know if any of the other parameters / modules are related to power usage? Here is the list.
Please post the output of ls /sys/class/drm/card0/device/
Maybe we can set it manually through the command line.
EDIT: here there are some hints which may lead you in the right direction, but radeon-profile already offers those options anyway. Have you tried enabling manual frequency control in radeon-profile?
Well, if dpm is working and GPU use is low, then I don’t understand why power consumption is so high. Maybe it is related with the brand (Sapphire). Have you searched for specs or reviews which may indicate power consumption?
I have. Unfortunately, the brand does not give any information on minimal power consumption or typical power consumption when idling, and reviews are inconsistent. Some report low numbers like you, some report numbers like mine.
