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[Mitch Golden <mgolden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Public bug reported:

I have installed 14.10 Plasma 5 on my laptop, which is a vintage 2011 
System 76.  Of greatest significance is that it has an nvidia 560M 
graphics card in it.

When I first installed 14.04, I noticed that the PowerMizer report of the 
NVIDIA X Server Settings would report that the graphics chip's clock was 
more or less constantly spun up to its highest clock rate.  Heat and power 
use were very high, and I constantly heard the fan running.

I found there were two ways to fix this:

(1) Add a file called 05-nvidia.conf to /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d 
containing the lines:

Section "Device"
     Identifier     "Device0"
     Driver         "nvidia"
     VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
     Option         "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerEnable=0x1; PerfLevelSrc=0x2222; PowerMizerDefault=0x3; PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x3"
EndSection

This pegged the graphics card at its lowest possible clock rate, which was 
adequate for most things but sometimes led to bad playback on some videos.

See: https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/410089-nvidia-
powermizer-how-tweak

(2) Revert to the 304 driver.  This still spun up to high clock rates a 
bit more often than it seemed to need to, but was fairly reasonable 
otherwise.

I expected that this would soon be rectified, since I saw that version 
337.25 of the driver allegedly fixed some issue with performance in KDE:

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/76278/en-us


Jump ahead to yesterday when I installed 14.10 plasma 5 -

I noticed that even with the 304 driver the PowerMizer reported the clock 
at its highest rate.  With nothing moving on the screen at all and my not 
touching the mouse, it was pegged.

I found that even installing the xorg-edgers driver (340 I believe) had no 
effect.  Furthermore, 340 did not respond to the xorg.conf settings file 
above.  The only way I can get plasma 5 to run reasonably on this machine 
is to revert to 304 and *also* put the settings file in.  This is of 
course not optimal.


Is there some way to determine what exactly is happening that causes the
graphics clock to spin up so high?  Nothing much is happening.  Just
scrolling a window in firefox is sufficient to start it.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.10
Package: xorg 1:7.7+7ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.16.0-25.33-generic 3.16.7
Uname: Linux 3.16.0-25-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.14.7-0ubuntu8
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: KDE
Date: Fri Nov 28 00:00:27 2014
SourcePackage: xorg
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

** Affects: xorg (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: amd64 apport-bug utopic

-- 
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Packages, which is subscribed to xorg in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1397178

Title:
  kubuntu 14.10 plasma 5 spins up PowerMizer

Status in xorg package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  I have installed 14.10 Plasma 5 on my laptop, which is a vintage 2011 
  System 76.  Of greatest significance is that it has an nvidia 560M 
  graphics card in it.

  When I first installed 14.04, I noticed that the PowerMizer report of the 
  NVIDIA X Server Settings would report that the graphics chip's clock was 
  more or less constantly spun up to its highest clock rate.  Heat and power 
  use were very high, and I constantly heard the fan running.

  I found there were two ways to fix this:

  (1) Add a file called 05-nvidia.conf to /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d 
  containing the lines:

  Section "Device"
       Identifier     "Device0"
       Driver         "nvidia"
       VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
       Option         "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerEnable=0x1; PerfLevelSrc=0x2222; PowerMizerDefault=0x3; PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x3"
  EndSection

  This pegged the graphics card at its lowest possible clock rate, which was 
  adequate for most things but sometimes led to bad playback on some videos.

  See: https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/410089-nvidia-
  powermizer-how-tweak

  (2) Revert to the 304 driver.  This still spun up to high clock rates a 
  bit more often than it seemed to need to, but was fairly reasonable 
  otherwise.

  I expected that this would soon be rectified, since I saw that version 
  337.25 of the driver allegedly fixed some issue with performance in KDE:

  http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/76278/en-us


  Jump ahead to yesterday when I installed 14.10 plasma 5 -

  I noticed that even with the 304 driver the PowerMizer reported the clock 
  at its highest rate.  With nothing moving on the screen at all and my not 
  touching the mouse, it was pegged.

  I found that even installing the xorg-edgers driver (340 I believe) had no 
  effect.  Furthermore, 340 did not respond to the xorg.conf settings file 
  above.  The only way I can get plasma 5 to run reasonably on this machine 
  is to revert to 304 and *also* put the settings file in.  This is of 
  course not optimal.

  
  Is there some way to determine what exactly is happening that causes the
  graphics clock to spin up so high?  Nothing much is happening.  Just
  scrolling a window in firefox is sufficient to start it.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.10
  Package: xorg 1:7.7+7ubuntu2
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.16.0-25.33-generic 3.16.7
  Uname: Linux 3.16.0-25-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  ApportVersion: 2.14.7-0ubuntu8
  Architecture: amd64
  CurrentDesktop: KDE
  Date: Fri Nov 28 00:00:27 2014
  SourcePackage: xorg
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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