Scaling governor controls

[Luke Kuhn]

This is REALLY crucial for some CPU intensive operations. That I know from experience includes video editing on newer desktops, and might include multitrack sound recording on netbooks and small laptops that a newsman or musician might take to a site or a gig. Games on open source video drivers also benefit from this, BTW.

When I render videos using Kdenlive, I always set the governor to high, It makes a substantial difference in render time, apparently because of transient loads that pass before the governor can respond but collectively add up to a lot. Just as important to turn it down the rest of the time, especially using overclocked AMD FX 8120!

These days I use the cpu frequency scaling indicator Ubuntu offers. It works in gnome-shell (Which I favor), Unity, but not in Icewm (netbook). Suspect it would not work in XFCE.  All that is really needed, of course, is some simple "click to run" scripts to reset the governor (did this before the indicator came out)-but they would need to run as root to function.  A simple GUI with easy access for end users, like that indicator but usable with XFCE, is really going to be needed for some workflows.


> Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2012 15:31:07 -0700
> From: "Len Ovens" <len at ovenwerks.net>
> To: "ubuntu studio" <Ubuntu-Studio-devel at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Subject: blueprint - research available audio improvements from
> 	audio/music	sites
> Message-ID:
> 	<40918116aaaf8c854db6b24c91a20e8d.squirrel at ssl.ovenwerks.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
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>  scaling governor - normally ondemand, sometimes gets xrun when
> switching to higher speed. Noticeable difference with "performance"
> setting. Downsides, CPU runs hotter, batteries on battery run devices
> last less time. Best to be able to switch for as needed.
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