How to set the Adaptive Mode; I'm stuck on the highest performance level

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

I’d like to have my PC’s GTX 1050 drop to the lowest clocks speed, when there is no need for high performance.
It worked before.
However, after a driver update (I don’t know which one), clocks are stuck on the highest values.

In nvidia-settings I have:

  • Adaptive Clocking - Enabled
  • Preferred Mode - Auto
  • Current Mode - Adaptive

I’m stuck on the highest performance level (which is 2).
Every 30 seconds performance level drops to 1 for 1 second and rises again.
It happens when there are applications running or in a complete idle state.

I’m on kernel 4.15.18 and here are nvidia-smi results:

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 396.18                 Driver Version: 396.18                    |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  GeForce GTX 1050    Off  | 00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
|  0%   54C    P0    N/A /  90W |    885MiB /  1984MiB |      7%      Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+

If someone could point me in the right direction that would be much appreciated.

2

I’m pretty sure you are running some application(s) which raise(s) your GPU clocks. They might be: compositing window manager, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, etc.

Which brings us to https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1002912/linux/very-slow-ramp-down-from-high-to-low-clock-speeds-leading-to-a-significantly-increased-power-consumption/ which contains a “workaround” which basically forces your GPU to stay at the lowest performance level.

Perhaps one day someone with a voice of reason at NVIDIA will decide this behaviour is not normal and fix this bug.