Acpi-cpufreq instead of amd-pstate

[yuanhao]

Will the system use amd-pstate by default? I am on latest stock kernel 5.19.2, but it shows that I am using acpi-cpufreq instead.

[yuanhao@yh-G14-GA402RK ~]$ cpupower frequency-info | grep driver
  driver: acpi-cpufreqacpi-cpufreq
[yuanhao@yh-G14-GA402RK ~]$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_driver 
acpi-cpufreq

And I didn’t change anything related to this… Is this normal? should I change to use amd-pstate?

[jonathon]

@yuanhao

Is this normal?

Yes.

@yuanhao

should I change

Up to you, have a read of the existing thread:

How to use AMD P-State in Linux

Up to date guide is here Linux 5.17 is here and just around the corner for Arch users who dont build their own Kernels and have it already. Even if you do here is the short and easy of using the new P-State Driver for AMD CPUs. Ondemand seems to deliver the best performance/power savings over schedutil with p-state at the moment. It should be noted this is only for Zen2 and newer First check if support is already enabled with lscpu | grep cppc if you get no output then to 2 Make …

[Echoa]

@yuanhao

Is this normal? should I change to use amd-pstate?

should you? depends

Pstate on some systems is still in the unofficial stages. You may run into some situations that performance isnt as good. Generally it leads to lower power consumption but exactly how much is more determined by your workload and how frequently you idle.

The easiest time will be to stick with ACPI as you wont need to do anything for it, but if you want to try out Pstate its not going to hurt you or anything.

The answer isnt definitely yes or no, its just a “if you want to”

Pstate is fun to tinker with and try out, but if you want hands free experience ACPI is your best bet