Kernel Benchmarking Results - Zen, cacULE, TKG, BORE

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Sorry I’m just bumping this thread again, but I did say I’d keep it updated! Interesting results today, and some further observations.

BORE Kernel 5.17.3-3

Wanting to follow up with @Grimy1928’s recommendation, I found that linux-bore had been updated in the chaotic AUR (thanks dr460nf1r3!!!) to be inline with current stable. So I installed it, along with the headers, and rebooted. Following the same protocols as my initial post here, I benchmarked it with geekbench.

Yes, you read that right, it threw me off too and I double-checked I hadn’t gotten them backwards. Bizarrely, switching over to the performance profile made it bench worse. More on this in the last section.

From the more subjective-qualitative end of things, I must say: damn does this one feel fantastic. Maybe even more than cacULE. I’ll need some more side-by-side use and observation, though.

So, I saw this as I started writing this post, and this is an interesting observation. I checked my own CPU graphs and did a little fiddling, and you may be right. I’d been keeping a loose eye on them while doing my observations with cacULE, and under BORE it does seem to rise more evenly across my cores. I’ll have to pay better attention to this to see if this is not just some cognitive bias of my own, though.

Other Updates

To try and see if the cacULE kernel actually did feel better than the Zen, I booted, logged in as quickly as I could (as I normally do), opened my standard load apps in rapid succession, and did some window-switching/loading/random stuff to make the CPU do a little work. I checked this a couple times with each kernel, and I’m now sure that the cacULE is faster/snappier/more responsive somehow.

Next Steps

  • I need to find some other benchmarks, and maybe do some targeted stress-testing. It’s clear that the geekbench results do not strictly correlate with actual, normal use.
  • I’m going to switch over to the BORE kernel for now, keeping the “Balanced” profile set I guess, since that’s where it was benchmarking the best. We’ll see.
  • In general, there’s a lot to figure out here, and it’s not quite as high a priority as the rest of what I’m working on Garuda-wise. Still, I’ll spread my work between the kernels and keep taking notes.

Further Things

Clearly, I didn’t do my reading as thoroughly as I should have, so I looked into things a little deeper. power-profiles-daemon was working (at least, clearly changing some behaviors), and I combed my logs to see if anything funky was happening. There wasn’t. It was correctly changing the active profile as far as I could verify.

So I tried to figure out what power-profiles-daemon actually does and… Well, I have absolutely no idea. Besides the config file and related commands telling me the name of the profile set and the fact that the “intel_pstate” driver is used, I’m entirely unclear. I’ve got a wad of documentation built up to look into on this, but mostly on other things mentioned in relation to the daemon. The project’s README shed little light, but mentions that other behaviors can be hooked to the profiles as well to change other device behavior. :person_shrugging:

To go alongside this, I’m also going to look over the various tuning tweaks offered by the Assistant more thoroughly, both in the hopes that it’ll broaden my knowledge a bit and just to familiarize myself better with Garuda’s work as a whole.

If anyone has any insight on the things I’ve mentioned, please do let me know. Sorry if anyone who actually knows how kernels work has to read this, I’d imagine there’s a lot I’m missing here. I’ve always loved digging into documentation, but I am in over my head on this closer-to-metal stuff.

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