I personally have not seen any difference between zen and stock kernel in day to day use.
Should I replace auto-cpufreq with KDE's new power management
According to the wiki, some laptop users experienced over heating, and there was the recommendation for laptop users to run the LTS
I typically load the LTS but from time to time run the Zen also. I noticed with some decentralized streaming websites cryptomining can go on - i listen for the drive storage whirring. Whether LTS or Zen handles this similarly, I have yet to test systematically.
Kernel updates for refresh might be more frequent?
If you have KDEās new power management, I would try it and see. My laptop is older, so I donāt have that option. I did use auto-cpufreq and that for whatever reason kept freezing up my laptop. I switched to TLP, another option you can try, and never had any freezes after that.
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I have not seen anything in regards to KDE power management.
We also added an easy way to switch power profiles from the Battery and Brightness widget. You can choose between āpower-saverā, ābalancedā and āperformanceā.
I think It didnāt get installed to our systems during updates because it conflicts with our cpu-autofreq or other power management tools we have already installed
The new KDE power management is for newer CPUs that support it, else you won't see the options.
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Safe to assume supported cpus are above 9th gen because I certainly don't see it.
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Not sure, but expect so.
You can also use the KDE widget āplasma-pstateā which is located in Chaotic-aur and AUR.
Intel P-state and CPUFreq Manager is a KDE Plasma widget in order to control the frequencies of Intel CPUs and their integrated GPUs for any modern Intel Processors running in Active Mode with HWP or Active Mode Without HWP. It can also manage the processorās energy consumption through Energy-Performance Preference (EPP) knob (if supported) or the Energy-Performance Bias (EPB) knob (otherwise).
You can set up profiles, etc., quite handy.
Moreā¦
This post is intend to be helpful to to those who are running garuda on a underpowered laptop like I am. I was encountering sluggish issues and high cpu utilization which was killing the performance of the four web browsers (Vivaldi, brave, firefox) & chrome) I use each browser for a specific purpose.
Today I decide to check to see if it was possible to get hardware acceleration to enable on my browsers to free up cpu resources. if you know like I do software encoding/decoding on a budget cpu is a nooooooooooo no lol.
I came across the answer in the manjaro linux forum [HowTo] Enable Hardware Video Acceleration / Video Decode In Google Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi And Opera Browsers Enabling hardware acceleration for my browsers is now allowing me to have a smoother workflow now that I don't have to relay on software rendering.
I hope this will help anyone looking to squeeze all the performance you can get out of your laptop.
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Hardware acceleration should already be enabled by default in Garuda... 
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@jonathon All of my web browsers had it disable by default, but programs like kodi, mpv does have it on by default.
When did you install Garuda? As I say, hardware acceleration in browsers (or at the very least Firefox) is included by default with new images.
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@jonathon I've been using Garuda since Jan 2021, I haven't check to see if it is enable on firefox yet. I usually use Vivaldi and brave more frequently and both browsers had hardware Accl disable.
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All Radeon Gpu's previous to GCN 1 (graphics core next) auto load the radeon driver all of the gpus gcn 1 and newer auto load the amdgpu driver. ive read that some of the gcn 1 cards dont load the amdgpu driver automaticly and sometimes you need to blacklist radeon and add some boot switches to grub.
Your gpu is a gcn 1 gpu so amdgpu driver should have loaded, if you run lspci -k and you dont see the amdgpu kernel module loaded let me know and ill teach you how to blacklist radeon and load amdgpu.
first you must understand this is not recommended practice and if you do this wrong you could damage your system before i teach you how to do this. i've done this before and i didn't have adverse effects but editing grub isn't for the faint at heart. As always your mileage may very.
if you can, just buy a new laptop its worth it this time. Garuda on my ryzen 5 laptop is like magic, i came from an older A-8 series laptop and it was well worth the upgrade
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this doesnt work when i use this
i get this
[š“] Ć sudo cpupower frequency-set -d MIN_FREQ -u MAX_FREQ -g powersave/performance [sudo] password for kurokami: sudo: cpupower: command not found
On this Intel/Intel desktop rig I like to useā¦
sudo cpupower frequency-set -g performance
Otherwise, for conserving power on a laptop I might setā¦
sudo cpupower frequency-set -g powersave
But if you are gettingā¦
Are you sure you have installed cpupower and enabled/started it in systemd?..
sudo pacman -S cpupower
sudo systemctl enable cpupower && sudo systemctl start cpupower
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yep i figured it out shortly after xD sorry for being so dumb
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No, you are not. You figured it out, right? 
Sometimes I get used to something being in-place or otherwise meeting my expectations. When it is not so, I can become discombobulated. My wife also accuses me of not being able to find things in the refrigerator if they are behind, below, above, etc. But sheās old and ugly, so what does she know, anyway. 
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