Tldr; Have tested multiple different Ryzen 7000 configurations on various kernels, and the power draw just seems really bad.
Been looking for a decent new laptop workstation that fits various tasks. Phoenix chips check a lot of the boxes that I want, but the power draw on Linux for these chips seems a bit…crazy.
The product docs say these chips are 35W-45W, but I figured that was just the range of maximums. What I’m seeing on fresh installs of various Debian variants is a CONSTANT power draw of at least 35W on the low end at all times. I’ve stepped kernel point releases from 6.0 to 6.6 to test out, and the later versions are definitely better at using a bit less power thanks to the amd_pstate_epp being included directly in the kernel, but this power draw is still there for the CPU package on idle.
A few different laptop models I’ve tested will only get 90 mins on battery because of this. I’ve now tried four different models from three different manufacturers, and all show the same type of power draw.
Is this just a “thing” with these chips? I understand they were modified from desktop to be a more mobile platform, but this is just terrible from an end-user perspective. I want the CPU and iGPU, and hell, even the FPGA XDNA thingie, but not when the machine can’t run off of AC.
TLDR, no
The cpu isn’t the only piece of the puzzle. 6.5 kernel is only just released, and at least just supported on Debian testing.
It’s not crazy that you haven’t setup any power saving profiles, or that the kernel doesn’t natively support these new chips and architecture.
That’s the problem here…not looking for configuration or tech support. Just looking for confirmation others have seen this, because it’s odd to have seen on 4 totally different configurations.
FYI: tlp, amd_pstate_epp (powersave governor), and powertop tunables all enabled on each of these during testing. Same results.
On the official framework guide for their AMD boards they say that you cannot use TLP / Powertop. You have to use the stock Power Profiles Daemon with Kernel 6.5.6 or greater. That nets the best results right now. Seems like TLP messes things up pretty bad as per some users on the Framework forums.
NOTE that TLP is recommended by them for Intel builds but not for the Pheonix based builds specifically
Interesting. Haven’t heard that before. I wonder when that was decided, because the last few TLP releases seem to have all the proper postage settings for the Zen4 chips, but those aren’t included with stock Ubuntu, just from PPA/GitHub. Will give it a try and see if anything changes.
This is highly dependent on your machine and configuration.
I just got a framework 13 AMD with the 7840U chip. Seems to idle around -4-5W of total system power. Minimal loads with browsing etc will be around 7-8 watts. Windows still seems to be better optimized but it’s not bad at all considering.
I’d expect the Framework to perform better than most since it was designed around this specific chipset. I have an order in for the 16, but won’t be getting it til next year. Just looking for something until then.
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