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Comment by kissiel | Hacker News Reader

My 4750u (in T14 thinkpad) doesn't go to 4GHz clock in the first 10s of load when on battery. After 10s it jumps to 4GHz+. Which means that for my bursty workloads like running unit tests in python, linters, etc. I get 60% of performance. To circumvent that I often use external powerbank just to make it 'plugged in'. Running kernel 5.9 btw. Annoying AF.

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You can tune power management behavior to suit your needs.

Would you like to know more?

Yes... Yes I would.

I'd appreciate a resource on how to do so.

What operating system are you using?

First step in Windows is this https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Adjust-CPU-Frequency-in...

In Linux you can control it much more gradually https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CPU_frequency_scaling

>First step in Windows is this

It's even easier than that. Just click the battery icon in the taskbar and there's a slider that goes from "best battery life" to "best performance". Choosing the latter basically forces the highest boost frequency available.

Does that work reliably with Ryzen processors? I've only had Intel laptops and it's a real pain to get them to not throttle regardless of temperature, power management and being plugged into the AC.

The steps are something like the following:

Install ThrottleStop Disable "BD PROCHOT" Set a mild undervolt via FIVR -> CPU Core Voltage -> Unlock Adjustable Voltage Enable FIVR -> Memory -> Disable and Lock Turn Power Limits Increase Turbo Boost Long Power Max, Turbo Time Limit and PP0 Current Limit

If I replace my existing XPS 13 (1065G7) I'll definitely consider AMD if throttling is less of an issue.

In my limited experience there is much more control over AMD CPUs, but it could have more to do with ASROCK bios options. It took me a while to learn about all the controls that were there and it was a bit of a double edged sword that I need to learn them at all (while building a very small computer). You can control the throttling at multiple temperatures if you want, but I opted for just throttling at a much higher temperature (80C or 85C).

GNU/Linux. As in my top post - kernel 5.9. Arch's wiki page is close to useless for Zen2. Renoir currently reports comically low `scaling_available_frequencies` - in my case: `1700000 1600000 1400000` even when plugged in.

Commenting to follow up if op delivers.

Checkout CPU Freq Utils: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_use_cpufrequtils

You can tune all these things, the trade off is of course performance and battery life.

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