Which driver for Intel HD Graphics 620 uses the least amount of power?

igormalov · 2018-02-14 00:22:33

Hi, I have an Intel Corporation HD Graphics 620 graphics card in my laptop and was wondering which xf86-video-* driver uses the least amount of power. I would like to optimize for battery life not performance. I read the xorg and Intel graphics wiki pages but they did not have power usage information. Which driver is recommended?

I'm currently running X11 with the default modesetting driver. Note that I use the kernel boot parameter `i915.enable_rc6=0` (which disables power saving features) because of screen flickering.

Last edited by igormalov (2018-02-14 00:43:41)

tydynrain · 2018-02-14 00:36:22

I don't know about power savings, but on my 2 systems at least, both with Intel Integrated HD video, removing the xf86-video-intel driver (and any intel settings file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d) and using the xorg modsetting driver worked best.

Last edited by tydynrain (2018-02-14 00:39:19)

tydynrain · 2018-02-14 01:14:21

I just remembered something. Installing and configuring tlp (in the commumity repo) can help out with power management and savings quite a bit. It's designed for power management.

Trilby · 2018-02-14 01:55:37

You want to select an x11 video driver solely on trivial if even existent differences in power use yet you disable kernel driver power-saving?

That sounds rather silly to me. But as you only have two options to chose from, rather than asking for generalizations here, try each one yourself and know for sure which uses more power on your hardware with your configurations.

igormalov · 2018-02-14 03:12:06

Trilby I didn't know the difference was negligible. Thanks!

igormalov · 2018-02-14 03:13:55

Trilby How can the flickering be prevented without adding the `i915.enable_rc6=0` kernel boot parameter?

Trilby · 2018-02-14 03:32:44

I have no idea - that was a tangential point to this thread and you've not actually told us anything about it. In fact all you have told us is that the kernel parameter is required to prevent flickering.

igormalov · 2018-02-14 03:40:31

Trilby wrote:

the kernel parameter is required to prevent flickering.

Correct. rc6, the powersaving mode, must be disabled in order to prevent flickering, hence the question about which driver uses less power.

Thanks for the help

R00KIE · 2018-02-14 15:29:17

And the right place to be complaining about that is upstream. Moreover if with one of the drivers there is no flickering I would suspect that the driver might be preventing the card from entering rc6 and thus using more power, which would be easy to check with powertop.

Regarding tlp (or similar) make sure you know what you are changing otherwise it might create other problems.

Arch Linux

#1 2018-02-14 00:22:33

Which driver for Intel HD Graphics 620 uses the least amount of power?

#2 2018-02-14 00:36:22

Re: Which driver for Intel HD Graphics 620 uses the least amount of power?

#3 2018-02-14 01:14:21

Re: Which driver for Intel HD Graphics 620 uses the least amount of power?

#4 2018-02-14 01:55:37

Re: Which driver for Intel HD Graphics 620 uses the least amount of power?

#5 2018-02-14 03:12:06

Re: Which driver for Intel HD Graphics 620 uses the least amount of power?

#6 2018-02-14 03:13:55

Re: Which driver for Intel HD Graphics 620 uses the least amount of power?

#7 2018-02-14 03:32:44

Re: Which driver for Intel HD Graphics 620 uses the least amount of power?

#8 2018-02-14 03:40:31

Re: Which driver for Intel HD Graphics 620 uses the least amount of power?

#9 2018-02-14 15:29:17

Re: Which driver for Intel HD Graphics 620 uses the least amount of power?

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