I saw this thread where the community said the issue is laptop manufacturer did not implement the required stuff (ACPI ?) for Linux, but official nvidia moderator confirmed it is a driver bug and fixed it: Nvidia-powerd fails to start on 4060
I have the same issue on my RTX 5080 Laptop.
May 31 14:17:01 <hostname> systemd[1]: Started nvidia-powerd.service - nvidia-powerd service.
May 31 14:17:01 <hostname> /usr/bin/nvidia-powerd[8071]: nvidia-powerd version:1.0(build 1)
May 31 14:17:01 <hostname> /usr/bin/nvidia-powerd[8071]: Error in getting the NvPCF static configuration
May 31 14:17:01 <hostname> /usr/bin/nvidia-powerd[8071]: Failed to initialize Dynamic Boost
May 31 14:17:01 <hostname> /usr/bin/nvidia-powerd[8071]: Failed to detach GPU id 256
May 31 14:17:01 <hostname> /usr/bin/nvidia-powerd[8071]: Failed to initialize Dynamic Boost
May 31 14:17:01 <hostname> /usr/bin/nvidia-powerd[8071]: Failed to detach GPU id 256
May 31 14:17:01 <hostname> systemd[1]: nvidia-powerd.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
May 31 14:17:01 <hostname> systemd[1]: nvidia-powerd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
And the interesting part is the same 570 driver + powerd works fine in Fedora, but is broken in Ubuntu. So it doesnt fit either pattern of laptop manufacturer’s fault or nvidia driver fault either.
I have failed to figure out what is different - I tried to make similar modprobe params, etc but no luck. So the question is how exactly does this powerd work and what is it looking for ?