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Psi2001

Member

Registered: 2025-03-15

Posts: 12

[Solved] System stutters after setting to balanced power profile

I'm currently using a Thinkpad X1 Carbon gen 13, with an Intel Lunar Lake Ultra7 258V CPU. My kernel version is 6.14.1-arch1-1 and my desktop environment is KDE. I installed power-profiles-daemon for frequency scaling. I found that if I set the Power profile to balanced, my system would stutter after a while. I noticed that the CPU frequency remained at a very low range (around 400 MHz).

$ cpupower frequency-info
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
analyzing CPU 3:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 3
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 3
  energy performance preference: balance_power
  hardware limits: 400 MHz - 4.80 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 400 MHz and 4.80 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency: 400 MHz (asserted by call to kernel)
  boost state support:
    Supported: yes
    Active: yes

However, my computer works fine in power save or performance mode.

Last edited by Psi2001 (2025-04-14 11:19:57)

espresso

Member

From: Pale Blue Dot, US

Registered: 2023-05-15

Posts: 41

Re: [Solved] System stutters after setting to balanced power profile

While others will be more experienced in this, there are some similar reports on forum/wiki, e.g. conflicting governors and additional utilities that may be tried.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/CPU_fr … les-daemon

Last edited by espresso (2025-04-11 15:07:50)

Psi2001

Member

Registered: 2025-03-15

Posts: 12

Re: [Solved] System stutters after setting to balanced power profile

While others will be more experienced in this, there are some similar reports on forum/wiki, e.g. conflicting governors and additional utilities that may be tried.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/CPU_fr … les-daemon

Thank you for your reply. I tried to remove power-profiles-daemon and switched to using tlp or tuned (tuned-ppd). Both have the same issue: when I use the default settings of tlp or the balanced mode in tuned-ppd, the system stutters.

espresso

Member

From: Pale Blue Dot, US

Registered: 2023-05-15

Posts: 41

Re: [Solved] System stutters after setting to balanced power profile

This just popped up in a DDG search. https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=219364

Psi2001

Member

Registered: 2025-03-15

Posts: 12

Re: [Solved] System stutters after setting to balanced power profile

Following https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/664093, I set best performance power mode on Windows (both AC and battery) and  the issue seems to be fixed now. Amazing , I have no idea what happened.
---
Sorry, it doesn't seem to be the case. After holding on for a while, the CPU started to be limited to a very low frequency again

Last edited by Psi2001 (2025-04-13 17:25:40)

Psi2001

Member

Registered: 2025-03-15

Posts: 12

Re: [Solved] System stutters after setting to balanced power profile

Following https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/664093, I set best performance power mode on Windows (both AC and battery) and  the issue seems to be fixed now. Amazing , I have no idea what happened.
---
Sorry, it doesn't seem to be the case. After holding on for a while, the CPU started to be limited to a very low frequency again

It’s so bizarre. I just discovered that when I do the following steps:

    1. Boot into Windows and change the power plan (e.g., from "Balanced" to "Best Performance").

    2. Reboot into Arch Linux.

Then, in Arch Linux, setting the balanced mode for the first time (via the KDE system tray applet) doesn’t cause stuttering.

analyzing CPU 1:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 1
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 1
  energy performance preference: balance_performance
  hardware limits: 400 MHz - 4.70 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 400 MHz and 4.70 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency: 1.07 GHz (asserted by call to kernel)
  boost state support:
    Supported: yes
    Active: yes

However, if I switch modes (e.g., balanced → performance → balanced), the same issue reappears after about half a minute.

I have no idea what’s going on

Psi2001

Member

Registered: 2025-03-15

Posts: 12

Re: [Solved] System stutters after setting to balanced power profile

I just installed thermald and started it. I got errors

○ thermald.service - Thermal Daemon Service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/thermald.service; disabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)

4月 14 18:58:04 PsiThinkpadArch systemd[1]: Starting Thermal Daemon Service...
4月 14 18:58:04 PsiThinkpadArch thermald[26878]: 35 CPUID levels; family:model:stepping 0x6:bd:1 (6:189:1)
4月 14 18:58:04 PsiThinkpadArch thermald[26878]: [/sys/devices/platform/thinkpad_acpi/dytc_lapmode] present: Thermald can't run on this platform
4月 14 18:58:04 PsiThinkpadArch thermald[26878]: Unsupported cpu model or platform
4月 14 18:58:04 PsiThinkpadArch thermald[26878]: Try option --ignore-cpuid-check to disable this compatibility test
4月 14 18:58:04 PsiThinkpadArch systemd[1]: thermald.service: Deactivated successfully.
4月 14 18:58:04 PsiThinkpadArch systemd[1]: Started Thermal Daemon Service.

So I edited it and started it

# systemctl edit --full thermald.service
-----------------------------
[Unit]
Description=Thermal Daemon Service
ConditionVirtualization=no

[Service]
Type=dbus
SuccessExitStatus=2
BusName=org.freedesktop.thermald
ExecStart=/usr/bin/thermald --systemd --dbus-enable --adaptive --ignore-cpuid-check
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Alias=dbus-org.freedesktop.thermald.service

Seems that the issue disappears now.

--------------------------------------------

I found this on internet: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1520160 … -i7-10510u.

Last edited by Psi2001 (2025-04-14 13:02:59)

Psi2001

Member

Registered: 2025-03-15

Posts: 12

Re: [Solved] System stutters after setting to balanced power profile

While surfing the internet, I came across this question. It appears to be a common issue (for ThinkPads). Should the question be moved to the Laptop Issues?

I also noticed in the thermald_daemon's GitHub issues that Lenovo have its own firmware for frequency scaling, and that Lenovo does not support thermald (as mentioned in this answer). Therefore, this seems to be a ThinkPad-specific problem (or a Lenovo issue?). Should I report this problem?